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Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
BECMI is set up to go from hero, to lord, to immortal, but you really don't need to use all the rules it offers. The thing I enjoyed was that they give you your keep at level 9 and BECMI actually explains what you can do with your land. I'll second Dark Dungeons or even Darker Dungeons. Darker Dungeons polishes a few parts, makes higher numbers better, and adds a couple good house rules. BECMI is my favorite edition and Dark Dungeons is the best published version. B/X is cool, but weapon proficiency is handled really nicely by the Master Box Set.

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Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
Wait really? People skip that rule? It is the only thing that most attributes do in the early versions of classic D&D. I think roll under attribute is a great foundation for your entire skill system. Basic tends to have modifiers capped at 3, so if you are awesome at basket weaving you can add 3 to your dex score to see if you weaved shut a hole in the ocean or whatever. It's elegant compared to skill synergies, rigidly defined skills, and difficulty scores.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
I'll try that at the table and report back, it seems perfectly reasonable at face value and perfectly compatible with basic. I'll see if my players like the bell curve rolling multiple dice produces better than the unweighed probability of a single d20.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012

OtspIII posted:

ACKS kind of does this, and it's. . .really good when playing online, but maybe a bit confusing for tabletop. You have a Attack Throw or something that starts at 10+ and you need to beat that by the target's AC to hit them. In Roll20 it means if you just type /roll 1d20-10 the result is the AC you hit, but it's a bit wonky to do in your head.

I just like having everything on my character sheet. A few stats/saves and a attack roll -> AC chart and I'm good to go.
I like internal saves too. Being able to play off of a character sheet without cross-referencing multiple books is what appeals to me about Classic D&D. The ACKS system sounds like they just converted THAC0 for ascending armor classes.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
Even more confusing is that Moldvay/Cook is usually referred to as B/X, and Mentzer is BECMI. That means that if you play B/X with the later Mentzer box sets, you are playing B/XCMI.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
I'm pretty familiar with the ins and outs of BECMI and Dark Dungeons, what are the differences in ACKS? Do they use Gazetteer style skills?

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
Hells yes. Any chance you could port it to java or something? I have no idea how to compile C++ on ubuntu. Actually, gently caress that, I learned c++ once I can figure it out.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012

Rulebook Heavily posted:

Speaking from experience, it's probably not a bad idea to run with the training rules as written. Let them spend the slots, but only benefit once they pass the training course. This isn't so much a punishment mechanic as it is a pacing one so that they don't get all the benefits too fast and suddenly you have a dude with a torch who is deflecting four blows with one hand and then lighting everything in the room on fire with the other at level five.

Unless you want that. I mean, why not.
I would disagree completely actually. That means that the fighter/halfling/dwarf's main class feature is tied up in the plot/randomness and not dispensed when their level would normally give them access to. If you wanted to balance it by having spell casters jump through ridiculous hoops to use their main class feature, then I guess you could have a balanced low powered mother may I game.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
How do you get your THAC0 above 20 to make it actually matter? 19 AC means the worst THAC0 would still hit on a 1.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
I just realized that a level 1 character would need a 2 to hit AC19 at long range with a missile weapon. So I guess that matters.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
Well that's what Rigby, Digby, Grigby, and Figby are there for. They can't all be Bigby.

Seriously though, do mean how do you generate the new characters or how do you introduce them? Generally in OD&D you just consulted the chart, and there weren't that many modifiers to work out. Roll 3d6 down the line, be dumb as a houseplant.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012

Xir posted:

2. What did the Rules Cyclopedia do wrong that really needed changing in the clones? Would I be better off using one of those rather than buying the RC PDF?
RC made clubs do more damage than maces, which is kinda silly. Also, a big thing that people really gently caress up with BECMI and RC is that they think weapon specialization is only for high level characters because it was contained in the Master set. It wasn't. It plainly said that if you are adding weapon skills to a game in progress to give the players the appropriate weapon skills to catch up. Also, RC got rid of the Avenger, a chaotic fighter path that was the most dominant melee character in D&D history. I would recommend Dark Dungeons, because it is easier to read and learn than RC. RC is a little dense. The box sets are easy to learn, but good luck tracking them down.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012

Halloween Jack posted:

Nah, the Avenger's in there. Why was it so dominant? All I see is the ability to detect evil and have monster followers.
You can charm monsters, and whenever you enter a dungeon, ruin, or castle you can ask to parley with the leader if it is chaotic. This flips the game upside down because you can ask for sanctuary in dungeons, then pretend to be a knight and do the same at castles. On top of this, you get cleric spells, turn undead, and it doesn't slow your fighter progression in the fighter supremacy edition. Smash is pretty ridiculous too. If you've been specializing in the same weapons, the -4 to hit is trivial and lets you add your strength to your damage. It ends up being drat near triple damage. If you have a good charisma, your reaction rolls will be rocking so hard that just about any intelligent creatures leave you the hell alone and you can pick the cream of the crop to be your valet.

Babylon Astronaut fucked around with this message at 08:39 on Oct 19, 2013

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
As well as it does what it does, I wish they got rid of variable weapon dice. They could chop out so much bullshit.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012

Halloween Jack posted:

2. Has anyone tried eliminating spellcasting from Basic? I've never played Gamma World, so I have no idea if any version of it manages to wrest a balanced play experience from relying on items and mutant powers for healing and other things for which you usually rely on spells.
I haven't eliminated spellcasting from Basic, but I have run BECMI for groups with no spell casters. They do ok with weapon skills, but I added a skill to heal 1d3 hp out of combat that made the game far more playable.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
^^ I'm not a big fan of the "mother may I" approach to spells, so it really helps that earlier editions had spell lists short enough to make a small ban list. There are like what, 8 spells per level in BECMI? The bad ones stick out enough that you can see what's hosed and ban them. With 2/3rd edition AD&D, the list of available spells is so huge it is almost better to make a list of approved spells ie your spells as treasure approach.

Halloween Jack posted:

In early boxed-set D&D any fighter of any level can put on plate mail and take his defense from "totally hosed" to "really good," while later editions assumed everyone would start with the best mundane armor they could wear and that magic items are part of level progression. What little Gamma World I've played indicates it's not meant to be balanced.

Has anyone tried or houseruled a system where the to-hit scaling for PCs isn't based on armor? How did it go? The closest I can think of is Old School Hack, where armor/shields are a resource rather than a basis of the combat system, but let's face it, OSH is not really a D&D ruleset.
In BECMI, you have the players buy the best armor they can wear and then their functional armor class gets better with weapon abilities. Net for example is incredibly useful for buffing your AC. Specializing in shields also works.

Babylon Astronaut fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Nov 1, 2013

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
For B/X, any group with less than 4 people should be looking at Black Streams Solo Heroes rules.

AlphaDog posted:

I think I posted somewhere on here about the spell list inflation between 1e, 2e, and 3e. The sheer number of spells is ridiculous in 2e, no poo poo there were weird unintended interactions. Then 3e added feats to the problem and it was nearly impossible to look at the spell list and just ban the bullshit, because the bullshit often only came out if someone spotted a combination, or even just lucked into one.
That's true, and the flip-side is that the DM is usually going to err on the side of not breaking the game, so if you like a spell that could be abused, you'll never get to use it and you end up with this massive tome of cool poo poo you can never have. The times I have played a full caster in 3e I've had to glad hand the enemies to not get my toys taken away and that is some passive aggressive bullshit no game needs. I like systems you can optimize in without ruining the game, and you have to intentionally nerf yourself once you have access to a gagillion spells all competing to be the spell worth buying a book over.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012

AlphaDog posted:

Was there a class-building thing in BECMI or B/x? I think I remember one, but gently caress if I can find it.
Orcs of Thar had rules to play as monsters. It had both advancement for common monsters like Trolls, Orcs, and Kobolds, and rules to create your own monster classes.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012

Spincut posted:

Does anyone have opinions on Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea?
If you like B/X, you'll love it. Most of the core engine is recognizable as b/x but without some of the more clunky bits. For an example; they streamlined saves and made ad&d style stats modifying saves core. So now instead of having a strange progression, all classes share the same saves progression and get bonuses to the ones that fit.

The classes are stellar, as they added all kinds of subclasses that really are interesting to play. This includes separating the traditional d&d barbarian into barbarian and berzerker and making gishes of all stripes. The necromancer, witch, and illusionist all have their own spell lists so they seem distinct unlike specialist mages from D&D.

The art is very good, the monsters are good, and it's only as groggy as b/x, but there is a rapey abominable snowman that I thought was a little much though it is literally one sentance and no worse than half-orc descriptions from any edition you can think of. It's weird fantasy without the Raggi dicknipple poo poo.

So for me, this completely replaces B/X and other clones because it is the same game but better. The reason this won't be my main retro game is that I miss the content from the later Mentzer boxes though it should be trivial to port the good stuff to or from the respective games. The physical release is the bomb too.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
I'd recommend B-2 Keep on the Borderlands. It was the introductory module for the same game as Labyrinth Lord. It's a good slice of dungeon crawling, and you can see what your group likes doing. It has a big handy map and the wilderness tables from expert which are cool too, so it's easy to DM as well.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012

Commissar Kip posted:

I figured out the descending AC (It's just AC-20 and then you get what you need to roll above, right? e.g. 7-20=13 so roll over 13 to hit). And I like the way skills work (I dislike the constant use of d20's on skills). But is it normal that in LL a warrior can get level 20+ and a halfling can't go higher then 8?
If you don't like using the d20 on skills, use 3d6. Gazetteer style skills won't see any major differences except the results will be curved. If you want to spice things up, alter the number of dice or how you roll them according to difficulty. If you think of them in terms of ability score generation, you don't lose sight of the base difficulty level or make them roll for things they can easily do. Use a hit matrix. They keep the game moving.

That's normal. The halfling will have amazing saves and the higher level warrior is only getting 1 hp per level after 9. If you use the later box sets, you even increase in your weapon skills after you hit the cap. Your level is just a roman numeral for some reason. There are also many published ways to remove the cap that are free.

If you want to be fancy in your hexcrawling you can use an old overlay that came with tons of TSR products or DIY it and print a hexgrid on an overhead projector sheet. Read this article, http://steamtunnel.blogspot.com/2009/12/in-praise-of-6-mile-hex.html it should give you an idea on how to navigate the hex maps.

Babylon Astronaut fucked around with this message at 12:57 on Jan 17, 2014

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012

SALT CURES HAM posted:

So wait, if I want to get into BECMI should I seek out the individual BECMI books, or is the Rules Cyclopedia the way to go?
One of the big mistakes I've seen people make is assuming the ascending boxes are meant to be played in order. You're supposed to be learning more rules, not that the rules only kick in at the level on the box (immortal set excepted for obvious reasons). I've had people go off about how weapon skills aren't meant for low level characters; no, that's not what the book says. It wouldn't make sense to not let characters use the overland travel rules until level 4 would it?

The differences between the box sets combined into the complete BECMI game and RC are small enough that you won't notice them. The big one is that each box set had random treasure charts that differ. RC folded them into one and matched the class of treasure with level equivalent threats. This is not a big deal at because remember, random treasure is the icing. You place the treasure that is part of the adventure first. Not doing this is the number one mistake people make that can turn the game to poo poo. I've played random treasure only, but that was part of the deal; making a horribly punishing meat-grinder with martial classes only. Even then, you'll have to nudge the weapons towards things people are good at.

On differences between Dark Dungeons and BECMI (and I think RC too): Dark Dungeons removes my favorite class in the history of D&D the Avenger in favor of making alignment matter less. A good idea in general, and the Avenger might be on the over powered side, but it is very, very fun to play and busted in an interesting way vs. the way d20 spellcasters are broken.

At name level, fighters get to be a landed knight, lawful guys can be a paladin, and chaotic can choose Avenger. Avenger casts spells as a paladin, detects evil and turns.

What it gets is: they can't get hirelings, instead they can get chaotic monsters. As long as they aren't hostile, and they usually aren't if you made charisma your secondary skill, you can bribe them or beat them into submission. As normal, the rules give you another reaction roll. If that one comes up friendly, they are charmed as per the spell. You can't re-up the charm effect, but there is no reason you can't still be on good terms.

The other difference is that while a paladin can ask for sanctuary in a feudal castle, an avenger can ask for sanctuary in a castle, ruin, or dungeon ruled by an intelligent chaotic monster or person. Remember, you can actually talk using your alignment language instead of communicating like E.T. and Elliot. This will flip the game upside down, where most dungeons become the safe place, and the outside world is the danger. The loophole is that like anyone else, you can pretend to be a knight and having the same skills and abilities should make it pretty convincing (remember, charisma is vital to a fighter in BECMI, especially if your party isn't running a druid.) So that's the Avenger for you.

In summary, Dark Dungeons is awesome, the pdf is free, the print version is impressive. RC is also cool, if you can get the pdf on the cheap, I would, even if you have DD. The print version of RC is usually ungodly expensive, and the box sets vary in price widely.

Halloween Jack posted:

There are a handful of copyrighted monsters missing, but just a handful.
I haven't had any problems using creatures from the box sets, the creature catalog, the gazetteer series, RC, or Dark Dungeons. Obviously Dark Dungeons is going to be the one with immortal level threats because RC put the second, better version of immortal in a separate book.

Babylon Astronaut fucked around with this message at 03:54 on May 25, 2014

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012

DalaranJ posted:

Descending AC is a bit more complicated to remember because subtraction. (I believe this line of reasoning used to be called "THAC0 is Wacko".)
Not really. You add the attack bonus, the AC, and the Roll; if that is 20 or greater it is a hit. No subtraction needed.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012

DalaranJ posted:

I never had the chance to play 2nd. Did it actually suggest doing THAc0 the simple way?

I assumed it was like later editions, "Hey got your armor bonus? Cool. Now (seemingly) arbitrarily add 10 to it!"
That actually doesn't work with THAC0, it works with attack bonus and descending AC.

While yes, THAC0 is pretty janky, it still wasn't that hard. Take THAC0 and subtract your roll to get the AC you hit. If you are the DM and know the AC, THAC0 minus the AC gives you the number they need to hit. It's not that graceful, but it's not as arcane as it's made out to be.

I usually converted THAC0 mentally to attack bonus though. That's just 20-thac0. Similarly, converting AC to ascending is just 20-AC, but I never had a problem with descending AC because of the trick I mentioned earlier. It seems to me that with any amount of DMing, you know all the ways to add up to and down from 20 pretty quickly in a d20 based system anyway. It really helps with OSR games because they all use something different and being able to quickly convert lets you use tons of material from different systems interchangeably.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
I'd say 3-5 involved rooms or encounters, or 7-9 simple ones. I really depends on what game you're playing though.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
Oh cool, that was what I was getting my figures from anyway. This is probably tl;dr, but I was on a roll:

Just worry about the set piece rooms, wandering monsters will smooth everything out. You want to include all the equipment they will need to succeed in the dungeon. Random loot is their edge up on the dungeon, and should never replace set loot. Come up with factions with different goals, the history of the dungeon, and then it mostly writes itself. Ultima Underground nailed it. Think of environmental features and what kind of flora and fauna will live there and tweak the random encounter tables or just pick the monster. A third way is to cross off each monster as you roll it. Although it is a game conceit that the dungeon gets more dangerous as you go deeper, try to make the lower levels more imposing.

Don't be afraid of having empty rooms, they can even be the lair treasure of a wandering monster, but put something in there that gives it character if only so they have a reference. "The room with the broken crates" is memorable enough for a point of reference for navigation. I kind of like the idea of having a ridiculously powerful monster doing a circuit so the whole "they need to know when to run" smugness actually works. They have to know the monster is a capstone monster before they encounter it.

An encounter doesn't have to be a direct confrontation. You could catch a glimpse of a beast that's oblivious to you. Maybe it is stalking you from afar, waiting to scavenge. Imagine the excitement of backtracking upon an animal corpse that is now gnawed up. I really, really like indulging the players when they go "off track." If they're interested in something, make it important or cool. There is no such thing as derailing. I've had parties completely devoted to figure out a whiff of incense I pulled off the random smell table. One of mega-dungeon's strengths is that it is wandering and meandering with loose goals. Don't overplan and get butthurt when they miss your awesome thing you had planned, it's a mega dungeon put it somewhere else.

Charisma matters, and good reaction rolls will solve many encounters, and with all kinds of reasons to check for morale it's not going to be a murderhobo fight to the death unless you are fighting a cornered beast or a mindless construct or something. If a fighter hits level 9 in the companion box set, or rules cyclopedia, there is a good chance they will become an avenger and befriend every intelligent chaotic creature they meet, and lawful creatures will most likely give them quarter.

Ban the thief, they are terrible.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012

A Strange Aeon posted:

It's confusing because everything I've read about hex maps is basically "Hexes can be 8 miles, 24 miles, or 36 miles" or something similar, where it's not very clear why you'd choose one of those scales over another.
Let's talk about hex baby.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
I've never understood why 2e is more for story telling. I used some 2e setting books, and their monster manual because it had like 800 monsters or something ridiculous but the 2e core books made my eyes glaze over. What do you mean refined for storytelling?

That's a good sheet. I like the hit matrix.

Babylon Astronaut fucked around with this message at 09:56 on Aug 21, 2014

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
I was just asking because I've never played it before, jeeze. Grog claiming is hilarious, you play 2e.

Babylon Astronaut fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Aug 21, 2014

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
Dude, keep me updated. I've been trying to tackle wilderlands for a while. It's so daunting.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
Personally, I would recommend some old rear end Judge's Guild products, specifically ready ref sheets. B-2 keep on the borderlands is a great example for handing out rumours, true or false. New Wilderlands is probably better, but old wilderlands is daunting as gently caress. It's huge maps, a key to the hexes and tables galore. Just hard to run imo, and I dig hexcrawls. Welsh Piper has a decent primer: http://www.welshpiper.com/hex-based-campaign-design-part-1/

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012

gradenko_2000 posted:

My interest was piqued by a particular argument in the Next thread that supposedly one of the justifications for a Fighter lacking any sort of 4E-type martial ability in older D&D/BECMI was that he was supposed to gain lots of followers at higher-levels to make up for it.
BECMI fighters have wicked save or dies and poo poo.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
Yea, besides the fact that you can impale a dude or knock them out for hundreds of rounds, it solved a fundamental issue: your damage and AC scaled as you leveled. There weren't 4e style powers, but your golfbag of weapon mastery served pretty much the same function.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
The original game is Moldvay Cook B/X. That's the Red and Blue boxes from the 80's.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
Wrath of the Immortals is playable in a sense. It's kinda nuts to actually play because you prepare spells as a 32 level magic user and a 32 level cleric and you have at will immortal spells so it is a book keeping nightmare with little pay off.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012

gradenko_2000 posted:

1. So I finally stumble across a way to calculate descending AC/THAC0 that makes it easy to understand: [d20 + to-hit bonus + AC >= 20] in order to land a hit, only to find that BECMI and its retroclones don't have the concept of a "to-hit bonus" or "Base Attack Bonus" yet and I have to backsolve it from the attack roll tables.
BAB = 20-THAC0. Also, THAC0 - target's AC = number needed to hit, and for the player to know what AC they hit: Attack roll - THAC0 = AC hit. Just use a hit matrix though, it's faster. I don't agree with the folks that say adding 3 numbers and comparing it to 20 is easier than subtracting one from the other, but it's been said that subtracting numbers from 0 to 20 takes a math savant to do it fast enough to not stall out your game so I don't know.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012

dwarf74 posted:

Addition is good because it's commutative. 5+3 = 3+5

Subtraction is bad because it's not. 5-3 =/= 3-5

I found it really easy to figure out characters' attack bonuses once, then just add to 20 in play.
Absolutely. I'm not adverse to converting AC to ascending and thac0 to BAB on the fly to use old material and save everyone the hassle of dealing with THAC0, I just find it hilarious how much people gripe about simple subtraction. Hit matrix is clearly the best though. No math at all.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
It might be this in chart form as it originally appeared in the 1e DMG: http://blogofholding.com/randomdungeonmap/

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012

neonchameleon posted:

It all depends on how good you are at arithmetic. Some fraction of the population is good enough that they never notice the speed difference (that includes you and me). Others really do find addition much faster than subtraction.

Rule of thumb: If you can't see a difference between two methods and others are saying one's much better than the other then use the one others prefer. Because you've said you have no significant preference.
I actually think the main issue is what dwarf74 said, you have to remember what order the numbers belong in. That turns very basic subtraction into something you need to memorize at best, and a logic puzzle at worst. I'm not great at math, I've just adjudicated thousands of hit rolls so it's burned into my brain everything that adds to 20. I'd agree with you except for one thing: sometimes using the method you prefer is actually more confusing because you are using older material and converting everything is an extra step in the math, your communication is hosed because you have to specify if you're talking about the number as printed or as converted, and you need to be consistent while reading the "wrong" numbers twists your brain around. In situations like that where everyone has let's say, a second edition AD&D player's handbook in front of them, it will probably be easier to just use descending AC. It's not better, but it is what it is. Usually my players don't have their own materials when I'm running the golden oldies so I can convert it for them on the fly and no one is the wiser.

And every one of those problems go away if you use a hit matrix!

Babylon Astronaut fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Oct 7, 2014

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Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
A row counter or tally counter would probably work. You can get one for ~5 bucks.

Babylon Astronaut fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Oct 9, 2014

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