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I'm stumped, but there is a master list of pre-WotC adventures. The captain's name is a reference to van der Decken, the captain of the legendary Flying Dutchman.
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May 9, 2013 17:29
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I've heard those 90s Basic sets decried as shameless cash-grabs, but according to the 30 Years... book they were very popular and, like you said, were oriented toward teaching the game.
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May 10, 2013 01:38
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I have too much on my plate at the moment, but if I did a sword-and-planet mashup of Labyrinth Lord (B/X Basic) and Mutant Future (Gamma World) would that have any appeal? Jack Vance died, and I've decided to read all his major works.
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Jun 7, 2013 19:15
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I've never cared about keeping track of overland travel, or even dungeon mapping. For overland travel, "it will take 4 days on horseback, consume 15 gp worth of supplies, and they'll have  2 random encounters" was more than enough detail to satisfy my 3.5e group. For dungeons, a few Rooms Important To The Plot connected by major hallways featuring a minor encounter and maybe a secret room or two was enough. However, I'm thinking I should actually map wilderness and dungeons for the next time I try Basic. Since a lot of what's in Basic is implied rather than explicitly communicated, much less instructed, are there some blogs or handbooks that give a good intro to mapping without it being a major headache? I just don't have the chops or the time to do maps with the level of detail that Otsp pulls off, and I don't intend to do overland maps to the point of assigning terrain types and random encounter tables.Also, from the Next thread: sebmojo posted:It's easy enough to fake them, or you could use an ipod/tablet/laptop.  intro where it says you're not allowed to play if you don't dream about Gary and Erol having a swordfight in your mouth. Is it really worth checking out?
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Jun 11, 2013 16:08
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Oh, I had a question about that specifically: What do you do when a party member dies in a pit trap and you need to quickly introduce new characters, via promoting hirelings to PC status or otherwise? The funnel made DCC seem to me like another retrogame that worships old D&D tropes without understanding why they existed.
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Jun 11, 2013 16:17
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I mean high-lethality made sense when it was the standard in OD&D, because the assumption was that your character is a pawn, they don't have a detailed background that's integral to the campaign, you aren't attached to them, and they can be easily replaced by jumped-up hirelings--which take less than a minute to generate as 1st level PCs. I get that you don't have to stop your dungeon delve to run a new 0-level session every time you want to replace a character, but making it the standard to generate 0-level characters and then apply a class template sacrifices speed of generation so that DCC can take you by the hand and making sure you play Old School D&D the right way.
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Jun 11, 2013 19:07
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Rulebook Heavily posted:The new character is introduced as a prisoner being held by the monsters in the next room.
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Jun 11, 2013 19:52
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Gasperkun posted:I think the monk just got included because it sounded cool and people wanted to re-create Kung Fu like they saw on TV from not too many years before. The problem with monks is that they're unarmed, unarmoured fighters in a game where the attack and defense scaling are almost totally based on equipment.
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Jul 7, 2013 15:08
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Remo Williams, The Destroyer? You may be right about that. My experience with monks in 3e is that they end up being Matrix characters, seeing how they need cloaks, gloves, boots, and goggles to get by.
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Jul 7, 2013 23:03
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Cocks Cable posted:But the Elf is the only overtly overpowered demihuman. Dwarves and halflings are just fighters with different window dressing. That doesn't make sense.
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Jul 9, 2013 19:05
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JohnnyCanuck posted:I've been thinking about it since I asked about an Immortals set reprint... has anyone ever done much with the Immortals set? Everything seemed really really cool., but the amount of bookkeeping required to maintain and level your character always turned me off of actually using the rules.
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Jul 9, 2013 19:51
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PeterWeller posted:Yeah, I know all that. HJ's post seemed to imply that the immortals stuff was too complex to be included in the RC, but to me it seemed like a marketing decision because the range was going to be Black Box, Rules Cyclopedia and Wrath of the Immortals Box.
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Jul 9, 2013 22:08
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Babylon Astronaut posted: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.
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Oct 18, 2013 13:38
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Lightning Lord posted:About Carcosa, I'm aware of the horrible nature of it, but I read that it has "one of the best old school psionics systems ever" somewhere, and I'm wondering if that is true? Like, is it worth ripping out, or would I be better off just using Mutant Future or Stars Without Numbers rules in my Basic clone games instead? I suppose the latter would also mean that terrible people wouldn't get any of my money. Here's how the psionics system works: 1. If you have high Int, Wis, or Cha, you have a (cumulative) chance to be psionic. 2. Each day, psionic characters roll 1d4 to see how many powers they have. 3. There are 8 powers, so roll 1d8 to get your powers. These range in usefulness from "hearing through walls" to mind control. 4. The number of uses/day is based on your level. Like many other things in Carcosa, it's "balanced" because everything is randomly rolled, over and over again. If I were going to single out anything in Carcosa for praise, it would be some of the totally wacky results you can get from the random tables, like a tank that can cover everything in a mile radius with ooze. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Oct 23, 2013 |
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Oct 23, 2013 22:33
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Do you need a system, exactly? Because I would just pluck powers from Mutant Future (Gamma World) and hand them out kind-of-but-not-really at random.
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Oct 24, 2013 01:34
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Silhouette posted:Fun fact: 2e Bards were one of the main inspirations for the Red Mage class in the original Final Fantasy.
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Oct 24, 2013 19:16
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OtspIII posted:Huge effortpost about dungeon mapping I have some kinda-related questions for anyone in the thread who can answer. 1. I'm thinking about doing a planetary adventure style game, since Mutant Future makes it easy to blend sci-fi into Basic. The problem I keep coming back to is that the characters would by necessity be unique individuals crash-landed on an alien planet, and Basic assumes low-level characters will die and be replaced by jumped-up hirelings or whatnot. Can anyone recommend a plausible way around it? 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.
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Oct 25, 2013 22:35
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Angrymog posted:You use a random table whenever you need the answer to a game related question and either don't have one ready or can't come up with something in 30 seconds. They're bad when you obey them slavishly and don't discard bad results. If the party is a paladin, a ranger, a wizard, and a cleric and you roll a +4 anarchic defending nunchuks in a treasure parcel, reroll or pick something next to it on the list. They're also bad when you think they're meant to procedurally generate an entire world for you, on a map where hexes/rooms are linked to terrain types which are linked to random tables. Your players don't care how many discarded fishbones are in the average troglodyte den. In my opinion, anyone who wants that kind of game might as well save time and play a roguelike.
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Oct 29, 2013 15:51
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SeventhSanctum.com has a lot of random tables for generating stuff, including books, fancy swords, and unique monsters. (Also martial arts moves and pro wrestling event names.) Mapmage.com has very detailed generators for books (not titles, but how it's bound and what it's written on), names, and maps. They're selling their stuff through the Apple app store now, but I think the Windows-based freeware versions of their stuff are still floating all over.Lightning Lord posted:My question is if you're eliminating spellcasting, why aren't you just using Mutant Future straight up? It's basically Labyrinth Lord retooled as Gamma World. You reminded me of a question I forgot! One of the things I Do Not Like about D&D right from the get-go is that the attack/defense dynamic is based on armor. I'm not among those who give a poo poo about the "realism" of armor making you hard to hit, it's just a huge assumption to make if you want the system to be able to cover everything from high-medieval to sword-and-sandal to Barsoom. The only retrogame I know of that dispenses with armor entirely is Blood & Bullets, a Wild West Swords & Wizardry derivate that gives a class-based scaling bonus to defense. I have no idea if it's balanced or not. 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.
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Oct 30, 2013 16:20
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AlphaDog posted:I'm not sure things would get weird with shield use. Just assume a cleric and fighter are using shields when you work out their AC. If the fighter wants to be all like "TWO HANDED SWORD
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Oct 31, 2013 16:13
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" his AC gets worse by one and his damage die goes up one step.
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Vornheim is a good example of fantasy that is focused on the fantastical rather than world-building, something that is rarely seen today. For example, the palace shaped like a hand, with tower fingers reaching toward the sky, the gardens of black flowers, and the fact that all snakes are secretly books.
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Nov 7, 2013 19:13
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A-ha! Now I remember the point where I gave up on ACKS.
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Nov 9, 2013 16:25
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He's usually in a room full of people who thought getting Motley Crue tattoos was a great idea. Edit: But Vornheim is a great example of fantasy for fantasy's sake instead of worldbuilding, which frankly dominates the market because it is marketable. I'm inclined to counter those who call it mediocre, but frankly I haven't actually used its random charts and such at my own table. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Nov 10, 2013 |
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Nov 10, 2013 19:20
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Hey, I thought I remembered one of youse guys posting the website for your Basic games, including profiles of characters and artifacts and a religion based around a guy who got turned to stone. Did I dream that?
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Apr 21, 2014 12:28
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Yesss, thank you.
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Apr 21, 2014 16:26
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Thanks, I was just rereading the whole thread on Friday and wanted to ask you. Then the power went out. Edit: Hey, you might want to contact the guy at http://taxidermicowlbear.weebly.com/dd-retroclones.html with a fresh link. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 16:12 on May 18, 2014 |
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May 18, 2014 14:26
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There is also Dark Dungeons (a fairly precise retroclone of the RC) and Darker Dungeons. Darker Dungeons, if I remember right, uses ascending attack and AC, tries to unify resolution mechanics for stuff like thief skills and ability checks, and also "cleans up" some instances where the RC included conflicting versions of the same rule, because the rules had evolved from book to book in the BECMI set. The author of Dark/er Dungeons goes into helpful detail on his changes here.
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May 25, 2014 02:31
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There are a handful of copyrighted monsters missing, but just a handful.
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May 25, 2014 03:37
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Hey, I have a question about Darker Dungeons myself in the wake of some of Cirno's posts in the Next thread--does the ascending scale create errors or imbalance in how the success rates scale, or are they tightly pegged to how everything was in the RC proper? Also, have any of you tried Blood & Treasure? Somebody said that it looks like the author combined all their favourite stuff from every pre-3rd edition, and that's true, but it has some neat innovations. I'm extremely disparaging of OSR games which look like they're pretty much just some guy's house rules for AD&D, or the SRD with a bunch of AD&Disms injected back into it. I've only skimmed B&T so far, but if I had to peg it to any edition...I guess I'd say 3rd but with a Basic design ethos. It has 3 saving throws, and a really neat way of handling skills using the saving throw system. 1d20+ability score modifier, and try to roll over 18 (if your class doesn't have that skill) or over your saving throw (if your class does have that skill). It's one of those things that looks inelegant on paper but it seems like it would play smoothly. The game also has a pretty flexible multiclassing system. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Jun 10, 2014 |
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Jun 10, 2014 06:09
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God help me, but I actually skimmed Machinations of the Space Princess. It actually does have some neat traits for building alien races. The promised "sleaze" is just this weird tendency to mention sex or aliens with three breasts from time, and other than that it's a pretty unsurprising clone of the LotFP rules, but in space. It actually comes across much more like a cheesy sci-fi TV like "The Lexx" or "Farscape" than Heavy Metal.
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Jun 19, 2014 21:45
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:The 80-est of big haired space games... Wasn't there an OSR game, or an actual really old game, that basically let you play not-Jedi and even not-Wookies? I remember finding a page awhile back with a bunch of OSR style Star Wars fanart that might have been related to it.
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Jun 21, 2014 02:47
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Hey OtspIII, regarding your NY Red Box: I have read some stuff from fans of Greyhawk and the Realms regarding what they feel are the essence and distinct characteristics of their favourite campaign settings. Do you have any similar insight into Mystara? From 30 Years of Adventure I gathered that Mystara never took itself too seriously and was designed to host not-Vikings, not-Romans, not-Mongols, and, uh, not-plutocrat-sorcerer-guilds sharing borders without worrying about whether or that's believable, because "having lots of new and interesting places to adventure" was more important than anthropology. But I've also read that in Mystara, as in Greyhawk, nations and rulers are pretty much concerned with the same things that concern them in the real world, as opposed to epic battles of good vs. evil. Either way, when I actually have time my next campaign will be with Darker Dungeons and set in Mystara. What do you like about Glantri as opposed to Karameikos or other Gazetteer nations as a place to set the campaign?
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Jun 29, 2014 17:55
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gtrmp posted:part of the appeal of Mystara is that the world is drawn in broader strokes than in other settings, and that those broad strokes are more obviously accessible to casual players. like, "Renaissance-era Venice/Italy where the merchant guilds are run by wizards" is a capsule description that makes Glantri easier to sum up for a player who's new to the setting than trying to tell them what distinguishes, say, Cormyr or Furyondy from every other generic fantasy nation. (and it's not like Greyhawk and FR don't also have their own not-Vikings, not-Native Americans, et al.) *Those maps on Pandius are a godsend.
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Jun 30, 2014 13:53
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"Planet of Adventure" is a particular favourite of mine. You can get a compilation of all four novels for a few bucks, and it's a shorter, quicker read than any given volume of most fantasy series today. As for how to facilitate science-fantasy, sword-and-planet games...you know, this is something that's been on my mind a lot lately. Guardians of the Galaxy got me rereading my old issues of Warlock and Silver Surfer, and it struck me that very few games manage to convey the sense of wonder in sword-and-planet adventure stories or epic science-fantasy, nor do many support it mechanically. Science-fantasy has its roots in the pulp magazine era before speculative fiction was divided into marketable genres, and I think it depends very much on the audience's willingness to accept the story on its own terms, instead of trying to quantify and categorize everything. In a RPG, this can become doubly difficult if the players reject the conceits or the themes of the game and instead try to gently caress around with some concrete bit of the setting to see what happens, or to follow some bit of "realism" to its logical conclusion. (Please stop me whenever I'm not making sense.) Granted, you probably won't have that problem if the players have already signed on to play some kind of old-school D&D. As for how to actually support it...the only thing I can think of is to start with a system that doesn't strive for realism or try to categorize everything. Don't distinguish between science and magic, or let rayguns and real-world tactics be superior to a space-Hussar with a space-sword charging on a space-horse. As for me, I would likely take a lot of stuff from Mutant Future and mash it up with Labyrinth Lord, or with some more work, Darker Dungeons. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Aug 4, 2014 |
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Aug 4, 2014 04:44
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Most of 2e's reputation for story focus comes from the wealth of new campaign settings with less focus on traditional dungeoncrawls. Actual changes in the core rules that could be seen as more "story-focused" include: 1. Changing classes to remove some of the idiosyncrasies of Greyhawk: the monk and assassin were cut, the druid and illusionist were made into subclasses, and the bard and ranger were changed. 2. A bunch of specialist magic-user subclasses and some specialist cleric subclasses 3. The Gordian clusterfuck of surprise, initiative, combat segments, and weapon speed was simplified/cut. 4. Non-weapon proficiencies were added to the core rules, and thieves got to spend their skill increases from a pool as they leveled up. (The idea that adding a skill system made the game more "story-focused" shows just how creaky the 1e ruleset was by the time 2e came out.) 5. Explicit direction on awarding XP for non-combat accomplishments.
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Aug 21, 2014 15:37
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FRINGE posted:You copied you own post twice, and neither time are you referring to the right edition. When discussing opinions on 2e, it's hard to distinguish people's opinions on the core ruleset from what they think of the campaign settings, the changes to the existing settings, the many optional players kits and rules supplements, and how they felt about a TSR that was no longer associated with Gygax.
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Aug 25, 2014 03:20
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FRINGE posted:The ridiculous skill/number bloat was another mess that came in with 3e. "How much better is a +51 than a +46???"
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Aug 25, 2014 16:38
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I believe Mentzer has admitted that the Immortal rules weren't intended to be easily playable, but that he wrote them because of popular and company demand. People wanted the gods to have stats, and TSR knew it would sell.
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Oct 2, 2014 21:37
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Definitely the only thing I don't like about Darker Dungeons is the 3e style skill system.
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Nov 25, 2014 02:10
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ascendance posted:People want to play OSR games because they are fun and lighter than later D&D iterations. ACKS instead bolts on an overly complex skill and proficiency system, with no delineation between non-combat and combat proficiencies, and grants each class its own highly variable rate of proficiency acquisition.
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Dec 19, 2014 15:50
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