|
Obviously I'm completely on board with the OSR playstyle so DCC and some OSR modules, in that regard, are much better. I definitely prefer the art, probably because pencil art in RPGs is what I grew up on. I much prefer the scaled down style of OSR modules as well. I don't want to have to read through many pages of backstory or many pages of read aloud text. Lastly I prefer DCC modules over anything Paizo or WOTC would produce because they are rooted in pulp fantasy literature, rather than being self referential of their own fiction from the 90s. So obviously sword and sorcery tales excite me and my players much more than Forgotten Realms or anything Paizo creates. For reference, I believe Sailors on the Starless Sea and Conflict at the Court of Chaos to be some of the top tier DCC modules. Sailors makes the players feel absolutely badass at level 1. Same with Conflict.
|
#
?
May 29, 2018 11:19
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 00:31 |
|
|
I don't want pages of backstory or read-aloud text, I want something a bit more than a hole in the ground with some orcs in it. Like, Juntu's Floating Ice Hell for Dungeon World is only slightly larger than Mines, Claws, Princess and yet manages to be far more interesting.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2018 11:29
|
|
|
Saguaro PI posted:I keep hearing that OSR adventures are amazing but every one I've read is garbage and boring? They all seem to fit in the category of A) boilerplate sword and sorcery poo poo with maybe a dash of Lovecraft if you want to call your game "weird"* or B) A classic children's tale but with violence and loving. Like, the OP asserts that the OSR's adventures are way better than WotC stuff but I haven't found an OSR adventure that's even close to engaging as something like Tomb of Annihilation or Red Hand of Doom or whatever. Even Paizo's overblown adventure paths have a bunch of ambition. The only adventure I've seen that even had mildly engaging elements was Better Than Any Man with the broad Wurzberg setting even if it was slathered in Raggi's wannabe artist provocateur bullshit. I think modules like deep carbon observatory are 100% brilliant at being evocative and interesting and not wasting my time at all. If you read that and don't at least "get it" I don't think you will find what you're looking for - it floored me that a module could be that concise and that interesting. I think tomb of annihilation is pretty good as far as wotc adventures go but they don't really compare.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2018 15:35
|
|
|
drrockso20 posted:Complete Book of Humanoids is a book that would have been so much better if it hadn't made most of the races it included pretty much useless thanks to the combination of class restrictions and level restrictions(the latter is something I absolutely despise when it's used in systems where Race and Class are separate) Yeah, I've always viewed racial level limits as a painful mechanical kludge. I love having weird races: the moment I saw thri-kreen I was delighted. I get not wanting people to be able to play dragons or whatever when the rest of the party is much weaker, but an all-monster party could be fun. We know they have their own heroes after all; who are the PCs fighting all the time? And if you're playing a game where everyone is willing to ignore inter-party balance, then that doesn't matter either. Gygax’s justification for level limits was that it was impossible to imagine a world in which non-humans had not taken over the world without them. However, that completely ignores racial, cultural, and environmental factors, such as wars or disasters, low birth rates, a tendency towards short-sighted thinking, or a lack of curiosity or drive holding a race back from expansion and/or technological development, none of which are reflected in a level limit rule (or even ability score adjustments). Using limits to worldbuild also isn't setting-neutral: it assumes you want a human-dominated world in the first place, which might not be true. Maybe the humans do lose out to some other species, and you're trying to build a setting around that. I ran a campaign where elves had driven humans into the wilderness and barbarism, rather than the usual other way around, and it was fun. Overall, I’d prefer to cut cruft whenever possible; non-human ascendancy is better treated as a worldbuilding issue than a mechanical balance one. Xotl fucked around with this message at 18:49 on May 29, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 29, 2018 18:16
|
|
|
Saguaro PI posted:I keep hearing that OSR adventures are amazing but every one I've read is garbage and boring? They all seem to fit in the category of A) boilerplate sword and sorcery poo poo with maybe a dash of Lovecraft if you want to call your game "weird"* or B) A classic children's tale but with violence and loving. Like, the OP asserts that the OSR's adventures are way better than WotC stuff but I haven't found an OSR adventure that's even close to engaging as something like Tomb of Annihilation or Red Hand of Doom or whatever. Even Paizo's overblown adventure paths have a bunch of ambition. The only adventure I've seen that even had mildly engaging elements was Better Than Any Man with the broad Wurzberg setting even if it was slathered in Raggi's wannabe artist provocateur bullshit. Saguaro PI posted:I don't want pages of backstory or read-aloud text, I want something a bit more than a hole in the ground with some orcs in it. Like, Juntu's Floating Ice Hell for Dungeon World is only slightly larger than Mines, Claws, Princess and yet manages to be far more interesting. Okay, I bought both of these, since I've read nor run neither. Mostly to try to contribute to this iteration of the thread, as I've got more modules that I want to run than I'll ever get through even if I found the perfect weekly game group. I'm don't think its ideal to review stuff you haven't run, but my initial impressions are: Juntu's Floating Ice Hell: This is pretty good and If it fits into one of my campaigns I'll run it in a system I enjoy. I've always been a sucker for the hoary old cliche of a mad wizard's magical experiment gone wrong causing something weird and spooky to happen and it's a drat neat twist to turn the idea of a ghost ship into a "sticky" ghost iceberg.. The environmental hazards are well described and adaptable, and the monsters are appropriate and interesting. This one gets the dash of Lovecraft sticker out of the two, just for the tentacle quotient. Survivors warped by continuous exposure to magic is a well worn theme, but done well here. The teenage damsel/hostage in magical slumber is a nice spin on the old fairy tale idea. Kind of creepy though. I do like the nods to the logistical problem of how to get some of the treasure out of the site, as well as the fact that a lot of it can be missed, irretrievably lost or forced to be handed over to the government. Good proportion of empty rooms and worthless items well described. 4.5/5 Lots of violence, gore and weird stuff, no loving. Excellent module that does a nice job setting up a situation and letting the GM throw the players at it. Kinda reminds me of a Fritz Lieberesque sword and sorcery story. Good stuff. Mines, Claws and Princesses: Ugh, landscape three column layout... okay, my dislike is a personal preference, but I'll set that aside. Cool in media res start. A damsel in distress is traditional theme, if a bit overdone. I adored Red Hand of Doom when I got to run it and I'm a sucker for adventures with timetables, so that's appreciated. Pig headed Orcs! It is a pretty cool hole in the ground with multiple levels, competing factions of monsters and a good amount of potential dynamism as the monsters have a definite agendas. As a site based adventure I like it, but it is reminiscent of KOTB and particularly of Forge of Fury, but more potential dynamism. Lots of nice weird touches A magic wish granting fish being held captive by troglodytes that is being forced to act as a judge for a trial on the utility of art. Lots of treasure, assuming the party methodically clears out every pixel of every single room like they're playing Baldur's Gate, but easily adjusted. 4.1/5 Violence and gore, lots of off screen fuckery (+.1 for male frontal nudity, something we need more of in fantasy art). I can see how the authorial tone might put some people off, but its not a deal breaker for me personally. Very much a dungeon crawl, but that's probably what the reader bought it for, and its a good one. So I like both of these, MC&P isn't as novel a setting as JFIH, but they're both site based adventures that are easy to drop into an ongoing campaign. I'll give the edge to JFIH, as it's a specific scenario I haven't encountered before and therefore was of more utility to me as a DM. MC&P has some stuff I'll steal and use elsewhere, but it's a well done rendition of a theme I have a lot of material on already. Anyway, I personally love the DCC adventures line, though I adjust them quite a bit. For reviews of them I think Raven Crowking/Daniel J Bishop's DCC Trove of Treasures blog is a good non-spoilery source for jumping off. Some that I'd recommend are: Blades Against Death DCC's "Quest for it" aesthetic applied to raise dead. Sailor on the Starless Sea Yes, I know, it's the moathouse, again, groan, and yes it was cooler when I saw it in a small club no one has ever heard of. This is my favorite DCC Funnel adventure and while it doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it showcases how to approach a low level dungeon crawl in the system its written for. I've run it multiple times and it was well received except by a grog who wouldn't shut up about how it was ripping of Village of Hommlett. Fate's Fell Hand A magical deck of cards that doesn't suck. A neat demi-plane. A timetable, multiple victory conditions. Allusions to Jack Vance and Clark Ashton Smith. One of my favorites. The Chained Coffin Do you want to run DCC with a nearly complete Manly Wade Wellman re-skin? Cool, I did too and it's awesome that this got made. Both a module and boxed set with campaign materials, this sets up an Appalachian horror themed mini-campaign. The kickstarter hardcopy came with a pretty awesome spinning wheel puzzle handout, I'm not sure if that's still available. I had a blast running this for my last group before I moved. Rock God Death Fugue Behind the Music the module, if the band is a hybrid of sacrifice and dethklok. A pretty neat looking one shot that I haven't had a chance to run. I'll try to think of some non-dcc adventures I've adapted and run to post later. I'm fond of campaign wrecking adventures and their continuing aftermath, so I'll probably post up a few of those. Nothing like the party's main quest being to find a gate to get off the loving planet before it collapses into a singularity.  I will honestly try to find stuff not written by assholes, but if so I'll note it with a * and move on.Re: OSR adventures vs WOTC/Paizo stuff. I like modules that focus on being made to be run, rather than being made to read, I read somewhere and usually think of it as the difference between a script for a play and a novelization. I like OSR and Indy game adventures when they focus on this design style. Not to derail into industry thread topics, but at this point I think Paizo is basically focused on publishing books to collected and read more than they're meant to be run. I'm not sure about wotc, as I haven't read any of their stuff since early 4th edition. Some OSR and other indy writers do this as well, and their stuff is equally not what I'm looking for in a module. I like pure fluff setting books like the old Terran Trade Authority series and things like that, but I'll mine them for inspiration and write my own stuff - with a module I'm looking for more specific things to run with/steal/adapt. Glorified Scrivener fucked around with this message at 19:12 on May 29, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 29, 2018 19:09
|
|
|
I grew up playing D&D with my friend's uncle's pile of 1st and 2nd ed AD&D books and just recently found this thread and discovered OSR stuff. What's the easiest of these to jump into? I played 3e in high school and college and am relatively comfortable with it so DCC looks attractive, especially given the amount of published material for it. I'm also relatively unfamiliar with the non-A old D&D stuff, but don't really care if one system is particularly good. I would put a high value on approachability for new players / ease of picking up for old guys getting back into it like me.
andrew smash fucked around with this message at 20:11 on May 29, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 29, 2018 20:09
|
|
|
andrew smash posted:I grew up playing D&D with my friend's uncle's pile of 1st and 2nd ed AD&D books and just recently found this thread and discovered OSR stuff. What's the easiest of these to jump into? I played 3e in high school and college and am relatively comfortable with it so DCC looks attractive, especially given the amount of published material for it. I'm also relatively unfamiliar with the non-A old D&D stuff, but don't really care if one system is particularly good. I would put a high value on approachability for new players / ease of picking up for old guys getting back into it like me. I love DCC, but I've heard a lot of good things about Swords and Wizardry Complete being a good fit for people who liked 1st ed AD&D, but its being cleaner and easier to get started with than OSRIC. You could start with the continual light version of S&W and then switch over to the Complete version if you liked it. My personal favorite old version of D&D is BECMI; Dark Dungeons is an excellent retroclone of it and the Rules Compendium is now on Drivethrurpg if you prefer. BECMI and its derivatives can be just similar and different enough to be confusing if you have strong recollection of AD&D. I.e. It's a branch where race-as-class is a thing. There are some great adventures for it though, regardless of what system you end up using. Converting stats between the different editions of D&D pre-3rd is pretty easy to get the hang of once you've got some practice, to the point where you can do so on the fly if you're comfortable with that sort of thing. And if you played and liked 3rd edition, DCC is fairly easy to get into. It has a different feel than D&D, so it might not be what you're looking for to run old modules with or recapture a particular feeling. It's worth checking out though!
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2018 20:43
|
|
|
andrew smash posted:I grew up playing D&D with my friend's uncle's pile of 1st and 2nd ed AD&D books and just recently found this thread and discovered OSR stuff. What's the easiest of these to jump into? I played 3e in high school and college and am relatively comfortable with it so DCC looks attractive, especially given the amount of published material for it. I'm also relatively unfamiliar with the non-A old D&D stuff, but don't really care if one system is particularly good. I would put a high value on approachability for new players / ease of picking up for old guys getting back into it like me. I'd recommend BFRPG. Its easy and its free.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2018 21:22
|
|
|
A new-old thread for new-old games. Appropriate! Getting in relatively early to mention my own retroclones: the reasonably well-received BX-inspired There's Always A Chance, which will probably remain stuck in 'Alpha v4' status for evermore, and the new and so far barely noticed You All Meet In A Tavern, also BX-inspired but very much streamlined, sped-up and intended for one-shot, beer 'n' pretzels play. Any comments on the latter, which is still a WIP, are welcome!
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2018 21:33
|
|
|
Thanks for the tips, I downloaded a bunch of free PDFs to browse.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 06:19
|
|
|
Was there a certain tone you were after? Because DCC sounds excellent if you're purely concerned with giving your players some nice 3rd-edish material they're familiar with to ease a transition, but it plays very differently than most games.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 06:27
|
|
|
Glorified Scrivener posted:*snip* Thank you for doing what I thought was a fairly straightforward request (recommend me some cool adventures) instead of assuming that I just don't understand the lost art of moose head searching, or that I just wanted adventures with tons of backstory and read-aloud text because that's clearly what someone would enjoy about modern adventures.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 08:06
|
|
|
drrockso20 posted:Complete Book of Humanoids level restrictions
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 10:17
|
|
|
Xotl posted:Was there a certain tone you were after? Because DCC sounds excellent if you're purely concerned with giving your players some nice 3rd-edish material they're familiar with to ease a transition, but it plays very differently than most games. B-movie sword and sorcery I guess? I think Arnold's Conan the Barbarian is the closest example, I always preferred games where the PCs were more or less amoral and greedy but ended up forced into heroism a bit also.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 17:28
|
|
|
andrew smash posted:B-movie sword and sorcery I guess? I think Arnold's Conan the Barbarian is the closest example, I always preferred games where the PCs were more or less amoral and greedy but ended up forced into heroism a bit also. Both DCC and Astonishing Swordsmen sound right up your alley.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 18:19
|
|
|
Saguaro PI posted:Thank you for doing what I thought was a fairly straightforward request (recommend me some cool adventures) instead of assuming that I just don't understand the lost art of moose head searching, or that I just wanted adventures with tons of backstory and read-aloud text because that's clearly what someone would enjoy about modern adventures. Well you gotta see that the thing about moose head searching is - yeah, sorry you run into that sometimes. Anyway if these are helpful, cool! Happy to give back what I can, as I've gleaned a lot of cool stuff from this forum over the years. Okay, so a few more adventure recommendations: More DCC: Peril on the Purple Planet Do you have any fondness for the Planetary Romance genre, particularly Sword & Planet stuff like John Carter of Mars? Did you like the Heavy Metal animated film? Does one of the folks in your group like the Gor novels unironically? If you can say yes to all of those questions loving  the gorean from your social circle ASAP and get ready to to take the rest of the party on a trip to the purple planet.Another module that is also a boxed set with campaign materials, and that has a few additional modules released for the setting. This one focuses on hurling your DCC characters to a weird world where the light of the sun is envenerating and strange monsters roam amidst the ruins of ancient civilization. Plopped into the midst of clan warfare between factions of a servitor race long since free of their progenitors control, the default assumption is the pc's will want to find a way home, though this is easily tweaked. (In one of my games the party went, returned and later escaped back to here after they caused the end of the world in another adventure). This one is set up as a hexcrawl, and I'd elevator pitch it as something like "D&D on an alien gamma world." LOTFP: A Single Small Cut: Author: Michael Curtis (author of the Stonehell megadungeon): This is a super short ambush adventure, basically an encounter, but I liked it for it's brevity and adaptability and have reused it a couple of times, once in DCC and once to great effect in a Savage Worlds Solomon Kane game. The PC's visit a church and while there are a couple clues that something is amiss, they'll like be ambushed by the henchmen of an evil sorcerer disguised as clergy. Said evil sorcerer and his crew killed the priests of the church this morning have been working on breaking into the sealed tomb of an ancient evil. In the fine tradition of basically all interesting adventure literature ever, the moment of the pc's arrival is coincides with the villains getting the tomb open and summoning a deadly monster. A disgusting monster with toothed sphincter tentacles, because yeah, it's LOTFP. Barebones and simple, but shines after about 10 minutes of work to link it into your campaign world. As with all LOTFP stuff adjust gorn and lethality seasoning levels to suit your own tastes. Death Frost Doom: Author: James Raggi * Yeah, I'm not going to spoiler tag this one, it's been discussed ad nauseum elsewhere. I'm also not exactly recommending it. So yeah, an ancient death cult built a necropolis into the side of a mountain. There's a cemetery built on top of it and a kinda stupid Evil Dead inspired Cabin, and oh yeah, a crazy guy that warns that you're "DOOMED!" like in an 80's horror flick. Spoookkkyyyy poo poo happens around the cabin and cemetery for reasons. I ignored most of that stuff when I dropped this into a campaign. Yeah, not a ringing endorsement, I know. Actually having just re-read it, it's a pretty bog standard dungeon full of some stupid in-jokes. So I'll just say this: The adventure makes it pretty easy and likely that the party will trigger a zombie apocalypse type scenario - causing thousands of undead to arise. They may also free an ancient vampire general who can command some of the undead. This is actually cool and led to a great campaign shakeup in my case. If your group can't handle events that fundamentally change the campaign world, don't run this or use the preceding idea in a scenario. And let me know, because I'll add them to my list of groups I don't ever want to join. Actually let me go recheck the adventures I have for this system, I don't want to just give a list of ideas worth stealing.... ....Huh. Okay, turns out a lot of my postive recollections of Raggi's adventures boils down to forgetting the dross and remembering what I stole, like the imprisoned wizard and the telescope from Tower of the Stargazer. I also consider Monolith Outside Space and Time something that's meant to be read, not run, so I won't review that despite my previous statement about liking campaign wreckers. I'll dig up my notes from the time I used The God that Crawls, but I have a sneaking suspicion they'll end up being "An unkillable acidic blob that's actually a cursed saint is imprisoned in a dungeon under a cathedral. The Priests won't kill a saint and are covering it up. Go."
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 19:04
|
|
|
I love ODD but don't get to play much as there are no local games and Roll20 is hit or miss, more miss actually. Are there any good modules/Adventures for 2 people? I know it's a difficult way to play but it's the only option right now. Not to turn this into a Let's Play thread, is anyone running any Skype games that needs another player? I'm interested in 1E and earlier.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 19:52
|
|
|
I've been trying like hell to be a player in a game but my schedule is hard to work around and I'm thinking of just accepting my forever-DM role and running something here - I'll let you know? It'd definitely be, uhh, moose head style with either labyrinth lord(BX/1e) or shadow of the demon lord. (Which I think actually fits the OSR ethos well despite not being a retroclone and having more complex character building.)
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 19:59
|
|
|
Glorified Scrivener posted:Death Frost Doom: Now, I have to defend this a little. The original is typical early Raggi and it's somewhat dumb. The Revised version is a lot better, adds a lot of cool little ideas and fixes the Gotcha and some other structural problems, so that, if the players are smart and/or the DM is somewhat merciful, you can get in and out with just the macguffin and pantsfuls of terrorshit. (In case you're wondering about the Gotcha, in the original there's basically like some thornbushes between you and the McGuffin, you tear it down because why wouldn't you, whoops GOTCHA IT WAS STOPPING THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE. In the Revised version it's like a huge weird-rear end monster that's non-hostile at first and there are a lot of clues that point to the puzzle of temporarily subduing it without killing it.) I ran this is a one-shot in 5e for three different groups and they all eventually got the MacGuffin from the shrine room the smart way, ran from the site loving terrified and all of them said they thought it was a rather fun fantasy horror experience.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 20:27
|
|
|
Megazver posted:Now, I have to defend this a little. The original is typical early Raggi and it's somewhat dumb. The Revised version is a lot better, adds a lot of cool little ideas and fixes the Gotcha and some other structural problems, so that, if the players are smart and/or the DM is somewhat merciful, you can get in and out with just the macguffin and pantsfuls of terrorshit. Yeah, I probably came off a bit harsh. I didn't know there was a revised version either, good to know it fixes some of the issues. The zombie apocalypse is still my favorite part of it though.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 20:39
|
|
|
Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I've been trying like hell to be a player in a game but my schedule is hard to work around and I'm thinking of just accepting my forever-DM role and running something here - I'll let you know? It'd definitely be, uhh, moose head style with either labyrinth lord(BX/1e) or shadow of the demon lord. (Which I think actually fits the OSR ethos well despite not being a retroclone and having more complex character building.) I've played LL before but not shadow of the demon lord, although it looks interesting. Not sure what moose head style is.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 20:49
|
|
|
Lol it's a little tongue in cheek because it's referenced way too often(see a few posts ago) but basically if the DM says there's a moose head in the room, you don't just say "I search the moose head", you say in what manner you interact with the moose head. If you don't think to slide it and pull on it and reach your hand down its mouth and all the things you might do, you won't find hidden things that require that, while in a more "modern" game, you might roll investigate and move on.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 20:56
|
|
|
Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:reach your hand down its mouth With a horrifying crunching noise, your hand is severed at the wrist! 
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 21:00
|
|
|
Glorified Scrivener posted:Yeah, I probably came off a bit harsh. I didn't know there was a revised version either, good to know it fixes some of the issues. The zombie apocalypse is still my favorite part of it though. I feel that reading both versions is actually an interesting education in how you can improve a single premise.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 21:00
|
|
|
Luna posted:I love ODD but don't get to play much as there are no local games and Roll20 is hit or miss, more miss actually. Are there any good modules/Adventures for 2 people? I know it's a difficult way to play but it's the only option right now. I haven't used it, but I think Scarlet Heroes is an oft recommended way to play a 1-1 game. It's designed to allow a character to solo a lot of stuff with some clever mechanics that increase a single characters power level, so modules written for a party should work with some tweaking. I also vaguely recall TSR doing some 1-1 adventures - they might be up on drivethrurpg by now.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 21:04
|
|
|
I got a book and the cover art is one of my favorites: He's just really into his work!
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 21:10
|
|
|
Glorified Scrivener posted:I haven't used it, but I think Scarlet Heroes is an oft recommended way to play a 1-1 game. It's designed to allow a character to solo a lot of stuff with some clever mechanics that increase a single characters power level, so modules written for a party should work with some tweaking. Stars Without Numbers Revised has a section with the same tweaks for Heroic characters, which you could just use for one-on-one. Frankly, you could probably bolt them on to any OSR system you like (I personally did it to Into the Odd for a one-shot just cause I could) and the document with the basic version is available for free. Megazver fucked around with this message at 21:15 on May 30, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 21:12
|
|
|
Megazver posted:Now, I have to defend this a little. The original is typical early Raggi and it's somewhat dumb. The Revised version is a lot better, adds a lot of cool little ideas and fixes the Gotcha and some other structural problems, so that, if the players are smart and/or the DM is somewhat merciful, you can get in and out with just the macguffin and pantsfuls of terrorshit. (In case you're wondering about the Gotcha, in the original there's basically like some thornbushes between you and the McGuffin, you tear it down because why wouldn't you, whoops GOTCHA IT WAS STOPPING THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE. In the Revised version it's like a huge weird-rear end monster that's non-hostile at first and there are a lot of clues that point to the puzzle of temporarily subduing it without killing it.) I ran this is a one-shot in 5e for three different groups and they all eventually got the MacGuffin from the shrine room the smart way, ran from the site loving terrified and all of them said they thought it was a rather fun fantasy horror experience.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 21:29
|
|
|
Elephant Parade posted:Unfortunately, the revised version appears to be written by Zak S. of grognards.txt fame. If you're okay with that then whatever, but it bears mentioning. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 21:29
|
|
|
Megazver posted:¯\_(ツ)_/¯
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 21:32
|
|
|
Elephant Parade posted:Unfortunately, the revised version appears to be written by Zak S. of grognards.txt fame. If you're okay with that then whatever, but it bears mentioning. Not to mention Raggi is kind of a grog shitheel himself, so you're double-dipping.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 21:37
|
|
|
Pham Nuwen posted:With a horrifying crunching noise, your hand is severed at the wrist! You can gently caress that sky high!
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 21:47
|
|
|
Pham Nuwen posted:I got a book and the cover art is one of my favorites: Not representative of most days at the office though.   Humanoids! Actually, I've always wondered if those are supposed to be a specific monster? Goblins? Imps? A Xvart?
Glorified Scrivener fucked around with this message at 22:11 on May 30, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 30, 2018 22:09
|
|
|
Glorified Scrivener posted:Not representative of most days at the office though. I just scored almost pristine copies of Wilderness and Dungeoneer's at a local Half-Price Books. Dungeoneer's Survival Guide has one of the covers I absolutely loved as a kid, and still love. There's the action of frantic adventure combined with the look of utter annoyance on the dungeoneer's face. This is just his whole day, and he has had days like this before. I'm partial to the Easley covers. There's also some choice Roslof in DSG.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2018 01:35
|
|
|
They're kind of weird books. You know you have too much fine-grained detail when even most grogs find it overmuch.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2018 02:28
|
|
|
Saguaro PI posted:I keep hearing that OSR adventures are amazing but every one I've read is garbage and boring? They all seem to fit in the category of A) boilerplate sword and sorcery poo poo with maybe a dash of Lovecraft if you want to call your game "weird"* or B) A classic children's tale but with violence and loving. Like, the OP asserts that the OSR's adventures are way better than WotC stuff but I haven't found an OSR adventure that's even close to engaging as something like Tomb of Annihilation or Red Hand of Doom or whatever. Even Paizo's overblown adventure paths have a bunch of ambition. The only adventure I've seen that even had mildly engaging elements was Better Than Any Man with the broad Wurzberg setting even if it was slathered in Raggi's wannabe artist provocateur bullshit. I've been in sort of the same boat as you on occasion. I'm a little more forgiving when it comes to stuff if I feel like I can pick ideas out of it, but a lot of OSR adventures have me shaking my head. I can see the potential, but a lot of things fall short for me. That being said, it really depends on what you're looking for. My fondness in OSR is the Weird element, where me and my players are amused by the strangeness they encounter. We like it when it's both weirdness in the theme, or the weirdness you get from sheer randomness. For example, I nicked a few background tables from Hill Cantons and Valley of the Blue Snails to make a random background generator for my players' characters, and we love the off the wall stuff we end up with. I also dig themes that are a bit psychedelic or prog-rock. Another element in OSR adventure design I like is the presence of factions, elements of the dungeon or environment that you can negotiate with, intimidate, ally with, or play off against each other. I think that adds a neat dimension to take advantage of, and I tend to have players who like to take prisoners (one of them is infamous for starting all his characters off with a pair of manacles) or figure out who they're dealing with. Finally, I like it when they feel modular or easy to do my own work on. Monsters that can easily be replaced with others, tweakable encounter tables, separate elements that can affect each other but can also be swapped out, etc. My recommendations on that level are: The Dark of Hot Springs Island Hidden by an invisible bubble, Hot Springs Island features wild, primal tropics containing several factions on the boiling point, including a decadent Efreet and the ogre slaves who've rebelled against him. The designers describe it as "A Sandbox of Black Powder", a pile of explosive elements with your players as the spark. This one got mentioned very recently, I believe in the last thread. I got it in a bundle and am still reading through it but I like what I see. It's system neutral but uses a lot of familiar monster types that aren't hard to reference in typical D&D. It's a sandboxy hexcrawl on a tropical island, and it has clear instructions on how to use its hexes and have your players encounter what's in them, several factions to interact with, and different things the factions might be up to when the players encounter them. An example is a cave that's being fought over by forces of water and magma: It's not in a static state, you can roll to see which side is currently on the attack, which side is winning, if any of the major NPCs on the Island are currently present in the area, etc. It's kept dynamic so you can adjust the story as you need on the fly or pick it for ideas if you need a new development. The whole adventure feels like a toolbox or playset with very decent instructions. Fever Dreaming Marlinko Slumbering Ursine Dunes Misty Isles of the Eld Where some modules are hexcrawls with clearly defined areas, these are three "pointcrawl" setups: the maps are vaguely defined and you're mainly shown where the points of interest are, leaving you free to move them around and play with travel times. All three modules are made to be used together or apart. You can have the Marlinko on the edge of the Dunes and past them the Misty Isles, or you can have any one of the three show up as a weird area on your own map. They're exotic and imaginative without belaboring their descriptions, giving you central bullet points to understand with more details you can jump to as needed. Marlinko especially has a good grab-bag feel to it, you can run it as a whole or dig around in it for what you want. Marlinko's a faction-filled urban setting that can be used for city adventures or as a hub for the characters to adventure from, the Dunes are a ruin-filled landscape with signs of dimensional decay, and the Isles are home to local antagonists The Eld, alien elves with a fascistic taste for brutalism and protein vats. Sort of like if the Dark Eldar had been designed to be faced by Flash Gordon, John Carter, or Jerry Cornelius instead of Space Marines. One really fun feature of these modules is the Chaos Index: Certain triggers in the area cause the area to slip further into The Weird, causing rains of blood, mass hallucinations, visits from godling tourists, Eld incursions, wild magic, and even a permanent eclipse if things get out of control enough. There's horror and gore to be found, but overall Hydra Cooperative's stuff has a sense of fun to it. Their writing gives you the occasional wink that lets you know it's not to be taken with deathly seriousness. The Dungeon Full of Monsters What it says on the tin. Seriously though, this is the essence of a modular adventure. The rooms are set up on a chart to be encountered in semirandom order that lets you build the dungeon as you go along, there's patrons and detailed rumors to encourage the party's interest in the dungeon, and it has weirdo monsters and fun little variations on old favorites (such as dimensional-refugee bugbears with metallic fur and mutant orcs complete with a mutation chart.) It has extensive random encounter charts with levels of rarity and uniqueness. The art's wild and colorful too.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2018 02:44
|
|
|
Pham Nuwen posted:I got a book and the cover art is one of my favorites: Disarm rules: it's easier to disarm a two-handed weapon than a one-handed weapon. Seems counterintuitive based on my experiments wrapping a mouse cord around my wrist and swinging it around edit: 
Pham Nuwen fucked around with this message at 05:04 on May 31, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 31, 2018 04:56
|
|
|
Glorified Scrivener posted:*snip* Thank you for the continued recommendations! Death Frost Doom (at least the original, which is the only one I've read) is definitely the epitome of extremely boring yet inexplicably overhyped OSR module I'm used to seeing. Warlocktopus posted:Good poo poo This is exactly what I'm interested in, thank you! I'm definitely into weird stuff, faction heavy sandboxes and so on.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2018 08:44
|
|
|
I like Dying Earth fantasy--hell, for the past decade plus I pretty much only run fantasy Dying Earth style. Are there some good OSR products written in that style, with a "sci-fi and magic are indistinguishable" and/or adding high-tech gear to a fantasy setting? In theory, it's as easy as mixing Labyrinth Lord and Mutant Future. In practice, it's hard to balance a game, or a campaign, without drowning the players in lightsabers and rayguns as soon as they get a few levels.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2018 15:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 00:31 |
|
|
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2018 15:44
|
|
