Old-school D&D/Retroclones: (Rolls the die, but it doesn't matter what the result is)

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Old-school D&D/Retroclones: (Rolls the die, but it doesn't matter what the result is)

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

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

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 06:11

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Xotl posted:

The social contract then shifts to the players, as the flipside of player agency being dominant: "look, this is a game of exploring and looting, and your explorers and looters, so you shouldn't need all this crap telling you why you need to go and explore and loot the Temple of Xlkjjl: you just go and do it".

This is pretty much the entire basis of my BX-inspired game You All Meet In A Tavern, which I mentioned a while back. Roll up your characters (which should hopefully take two minutes or less), then meet the patron in the aforementioned tavern who tells you what you're being asked to do in tonight's game and what victory condition you need to 'win' it. It might be something fairly open-ended like "find out what happened to the missing villagers", or very specific like "enter Castle Deathmaw and kill Lord Blackskull!"

It's probably because I never actually got to play in an ongoing campaign back in the 80s, but to me the old "here's a new module, roll up a PC of the right level and let's go exploring" mode of play is the default.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2018 22:35

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Halloween Jack posted:

I think that's basically the default; I mean, how many people studiously played AD&D by the book?

Whenever I played, it was always pretty much "Cool! New spells, we'll use those. New character classes, we'll use those. Magic items, we'll use those," but anything that made playing more complicated (like the weapon-vs-AC modifier table) were ignored.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2018 08:42

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

sebmojo posted:

This is my favorite example of AD&D design. It's on page 28, between gemstones and hirelings, and requires that every monster attack roll have a d6 rolled with it to see if there's a head attack. It's not mentioned anywhere else in the system

e: I've actually just figured out what the point of the rule is, it's to punish players who don't want to take their helmets off to listen at doors

It's things like that which just make me imagine Gygax always DMing with a colossal smug, poo poo-eating grin and the words gently caress YOU written on a Post-It stuck to the back of his DM's screen. It's the same GM-as-adversary hidden behind "realism" that John Wick has made a career out of.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2018 23:40

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Bob Quixote posted:

Does anyone here have any favorite houserules, or rules that started as houserules that get added to the D&D-alikes that people have been putting out in this whole Old-School genre?

I've always liked that "chop till you drop" rule for Fighters since it seems like it would make some of the absolutely ridiculous encounter rates for small or weak enemies like Kobolds and Goblins go by a bit quicker for higher level characters.

The "Mighty Deeds" bit from DCC is also really cool since you can tag just about any attack to do something other than slowly whittle down enemy HP.

Both my retroclones feature an always-on version of Cleave for fighters, so any excess damage when an enemy is killed is automatically carried over to the next opponent. (No rolling to hit, no exact positioning demands - it just happens.) A good damage roll means a fighter can take out three or four trash enemies in one attack.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2018 12:30

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Xotl posted:

I like this description a lot. I find the idea that an old-school DM is automatically adversarial just silly.

I never understood the John Wickian philosophy that the DM is there to torment and/or kill the PCs over the slightest arbitrary mistake, and then gloat smugly about it.

"I've spent months devising this amazing adventure that will decide the fate of an entire continent! Now to kill all the PCs in the first encounter in a humiliating manner because they didn't prepare exactly the right spells and solve a riddle that requires a real-world knowledge of advanced calculus and Mayan mythology! Wait, why are you telling me to gently caress off?"

# ¿ Jan 21, 2019 01:16

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Lockdown sucks, and my wife and I are both symptomatic for covid-19, which sucks even more. But hey, enforced do-nothing time at least means I'm back working on my retroclone You All Meet In A Tavern for the first time in two years! I'm even writing a sample adventure for it, so this time I might finish the thing. Shame it look a literal plague to do it...

# ¿ Apr 7, 2020 22:39

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

I've put full details in the game-writing thread, but thought it might be of interest to goons here too: I finally finished my B/X retroclone You All Meet In A Tavern! It only took several years and a worldwide plague, but now it's done. I also wrote an introductory adventure to go with it.

Here's the link to the PDFs of the rules and adventure. Comments welcome!

# ¿ Apr 12, 2020 12:04

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

drrockso20 posted:

Anything about it that makes it stand out from the crowd?

Enormously faster combat (no to-hit rolls) and character creation, all classes get some kind of special abilities, no equipment (characters are assumed to have normal stuff they need for the adventure, plus a one-shot "rabbit from a hat" for more unusual items), designed entirely for single-session play, no character advancement or XP for that reason, smaller lists of spells that scale by player tier rather than dozens of new ones becoming available at higher levels, if a character dies their replacement catches up with them from the tavern as soon as the player creates them, and a bunch of other stuff. But it's still compatible with B/X (and probably BECMI and 1e) with a very small amount of conversion work.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2020 12:23

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Sailor Viy posted:

Is "d20" a typo?

Last comment... I would really recommend cutting every line that begins "unlike in other editions of the original game..." People who know D&D will recognise the changes you've made, people who don't know probably won't care. Plus, throwing shade on other games just isn't classy even if they deserve it.

Oops, yes - my bad! I'll fix it. Thanks for the comments; glad you're liking it so far. I'll take your note about shade aboard as well.

If I get good feedback on YAMIAT, my plan is to put together a properly laid-out PDF with some artwork (free 30-day demo of Quark Xpress, here I come!). That'll probably take a while to come about, though.

I'm also now coming up with ways to adapt YAMIAT for a sci-fi/horror game, again designed around one-shot play. Explore creepy alien derelicts and bases to loot them for their advanced technology, while trying not to be killed by whatever unknowable horrors lurk within - that kind of thing. The same kind of scary atmosphere as Alien/Aliens, Event Horizon, The Thing, Dead Space, the non-stupid parts of Prometheus, etc, so I'll be dialling the humour way down! Melee/Support/Intercept will become Frontline/Support/Intercept, and firefights have a chance of causing collateral damage to the stuff you want to loot or the ship itself, but the combat system will probably be much the same. It'll also have an actual background setting rather than "today, you're in Fantasy Egypt!"

# ¿ Apr 15, 2020 11:05

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

aldantefax posted:

Been reading Electric Bastionland and I gotta say I do like the idea of everybody just rolls damage and it's like that scene from Inglorious Basterds where everybody just starts shooting and nobody, absolutely nobody goes away unharmed. It certainly drives home the point that being a murder hobo leads to a quick and extremely painful doom.

That's pretty much the system from my last B/X retroclone*; everyone only rolls for damage on the grounds that if you're making an attack you're going to cause some harm, and if the result beats the target's AC, bonus damage is inflicted as well.

*Is it really a 'clone' if you modify some systems so much they don't resemble the original any more? Maybe 'retromutant' is a better term.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2021 12:29

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

mellonbread posted:

I don't love Into the Odd or Electric Bastionland by themselves, but they solve many issues I have with the modern crop of D20 based indies.

Auto-hit removes the tedious rolling to hit that can stretch combat out to an infinity in even a very simple system. It also removes the most unfun part of the game for a lot of people - roll a D20, miss, and then wait one to five minutes for your next opportunity to do so again.

Combat was without a doubt my least favourite part of playing BX/1e/an unholy agglomeration of both as a kid - for that matter, any RPG (Runequest, Traveller, etc) - for exactly that reason. Exploring was great, dealing with NPCs in-character fun... but the moment it was time to roll initiative, everything slowed to a crawl. Even combat in something as simplistic as T&T was a chore, because it became obvious early on that either you were going to win - in which case, why drag things out? - or fall into a death spiral and lose. (I can't imagine sitting through a major setpiece battle in something like 4e, because it just seems like playing XCOM without the computer doing any of the scut work.)

Every time I try to make a new game I pare combat down even more. My dream combat system would be one that says "you're the protagonists so you're going to win the fight, but what will it cost you?" and is done in one turn. I can imagine a lot of people wouldn't even want to contemplate that, mind...

# ¿ Jan 29, 2021 17:14

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

I'm now spitballing a way to make a one-round combat resolution system work in a clone. Total up the HD of the enemies as a target number, and then base the PCs' attack strength on their levels, any spells or powers used? If you beat their number, great; if not, it costs you resources of some kind. HP, followers, permanent wounds, etc. You can't die until the final boss battle (my games are meant for one-shot play with a definite objective rather than campaigns), but the more you've lost along the way, the harder it will be to get out alive and mostly in one piece. Would it work?

# ¿ Jan 29, 2021 20:01

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

I'm reminded of playing 'The Keep on the Borderlands' way back when. Before you even get to go into the kobold lair, the place you're likely to start, there's a 1 in 3 chance that 8 kobolds ambush your party. Then there's a pit trap, giant rats, 6 more kobold guards, and if the DM plays things with the tiniest bit of tactical realism there'll be at least 20 more alerted by any fighting in short order.

The newbie experience for most people back then was "you get to roll a d20 once, maybe twice, then the DM makes a bunch of rolls and you die."

# ¿ Jan 31, 2021 00:37

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

No offence taken, y'all. :haw:

For me, the early 80s introductory experience of D&D as a young teen was:

One person who owned the rules and B2, had read them, and absorbed maybe a third of what they said;
One or two people who really wanted to get into the game but only had the DM's fragmentary descriptions of how to play it to go on (I was one of these);
Another couple of people who were vaguely interested but had no intention of taking it seriously;
At least one who thought it was a stupid waste of time but was only doing it because all their friends were.

So with that mindset, all encounters are fights to the death because the DM doesn't know any better, and won't let anyone else read the module to check how it's meant to be played because that would be "cheating". (Ironically, the first time I DM'd after buying the rules myself, two of the players - one of them the original DM - kept leaving the table because they had a copy of the same module and were sneaking looks at what was coming next.) In B2, I don't think we ever even visited the titular Keep, but went straight to the caves. And then, 2 in 6 chance of...

# ¿ Jan 31, 2021 09:09

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Wasn't Network 23 the evil ratings-ruling TV channel in Max Headroom? If this game doesn't have blipverts I'll be very disappointed.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2021 09:37

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

I got rid of the "it gets to your turn and there's a chance that you roll and nothing happens" issue in my most recent retromutant by having all attacks cause damage; it's how much that's the variable. But I know there's a vocal contingent who get very angry at the thought of this (ie, the grogs who screamed and yelled until Great Weapon Fighting - aka "damage on a MIIIISSSS" :bahgawd:

- was nerfed).

# ¿ Mar 11, 2021 10:03

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

B/X with some 1e mushed in was basically my teenage RPG experience, with some Traveller, Runequest and T&T. From my desk as I type this I can also see boxes for Paranoia, Judge Dredd, Ghostbusters, Doctor Who and Star Trek, but I never persuaded anyone to play them with me. :smith:

The appeal of OSR to me is that it (in theory) tries to simplify and speed up rather than add even more rules.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2021 12:17

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

My retromutant gives fighters an automatic cleave whenever they kill an enemy; any leftover damage gets transferred to the next target (and the next, and next...) That way, even a low-level fighter has the chance to carve through opponents like a whirlwind of death.

If it sounds excessive, bear in mind that in this combat system every attack causes damage, it's just a question of how much (no to-hit rolls). So a trash mob can still be lethal to low-level characters - this helps compensate.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2021 11:02

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

mellonbread posted:

Yeah that's definitely a strength of something like Mighty Deeds, various weapon special abilities in something like GLOG, or even some of the Fighter special powers in 5E. You get to deal damage, but also do something else besides make the HP number go down. Disarm the other guy, trip him, reduce his AC, etc. Produce an immediate, visible change with your attack, without the need for a detailed wound system.

I'm thinking my ideal system is something like "fighters automatically deal damage when they attack, the roll-to-hit determines whether you get some special effect in addition to the damage"

That's a really good take on the fighter. "You can deal damage or do something cool" is boring, because it draws out combat and makes you less likely to risk wasting your turn. "You can deal damage and do something cool", though...

# ¿ Apr 22, 2021 07:26

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Halloween Jack posted:

The designers wanted to, for example, implement ascending AC and to-hit scores, but they were afraid of the reaction from the established fanbase. AD&D2e was the first edition where Don't Make Baby Cry was a big priority.

Having designed a couple of retroclones/retromutants, which moved progressively further away from being straight copies, I found many mechanics - even in the relatively clean and straightforward BX - that made me go "this is unintuitive and complicated and slows things down, why is it like this?" And the answer was, obviously, the spaceman meme: always has been.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2021 14:52

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Warthur posted:

That's probably because that's how lots of people played 1E in practice - because they got a start with one of the iterations of Basic, then the 1E rulebooks were badly arranged and overcomplicated stuff absurdly to little benefit, so they just used the procedures they were familiar with from Basic rather than the full-fat 1E rules. (The fact that most of the 1E system is actually partitioned off in the DMG, rather than being player-facing rules, makes this easier - you don't even get the combat system in the 1E PHB, so if the DM wants to ignore complex initiative and weapon speed and weapon vs. armour type etc. etc. and just use simple initiative and THAC0, they can do it and the players will be none the wiser.)

BX plus 1e's weapons, armour, spells and magic items was pretty much how I and my friends played back then. There was so much stuff in the DMG's side of the combat system that everyone just noped out of and never even bothered trying, like weapon vs armour. Didn't someone recently analyse that mathematically by comparing it to tables from the Brown Books (or even Chainmail) and discovered that Gygax had completely hosed it up by getting an axis backwards, so that weapons which should have been the best versus particular types of armour ended up being the worst?

# ¿ Jun 30, 2021 15:26

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Arivia posted:

I�d�ve bought it but not for ONE HUNDRED loving DOLLARS. Christ Alexis. For people not plugged into the OSR sphere, you may know him better as �mustard arbitrage campaign guy�.

Mustard Guy! :dance:

I always get a kick out of the sheer passive-aggressiveness of "I've created a deep and exhaustively-researched sandbox world for you, but the only fun you're allowed to have is what I permit".

# ¿ Sep 9, 2021 18:32

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

moths posted:

*Punches transphobic alien*
"Welcome t'erf."

# ¿ Sep 16, 2021 14:19

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Nickoten posted:

You're doing an impressionistic take on that period where everyone's rapidly rerolling characters because their first ones fell into the kobold trap at the beginning of B2.

Ha, that reminds me of when I tried the D&D Next (as was) playtest and had a TPK at that pit trap.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2022 23:23

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Level drain makes no sense in the old-school approach to adventures of "you must be this tall (level)" to enter. Great, you just got hit by a Shadow or whatever and now your character is mechanically all but useless within the adventure and doomed to be killed by higher-level dangers. Sadistic rear end in a top hat DMs will be chortling behind their screens, but who ever enjoyed playing against (rather than with) them anyway?

# ¿ Jan 18, 2022 15:03

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

sebmojo posted:

I'm still astonished that he didn't even hint at a task resolution system in 1e. Like, roll under stat on a d20 is right there, and I don't doubt he would have done that kind of thing all the time.

B/X had "There's Always A Chance" as a roll-under resolution option (which I named one of my retroclones after).

I don't know why someone didn't release an XCOM-style 4e game, because its grid-based LOS combat system seems perfectly suited to all that positional math.

# ¿ May 20, 2022 14:31

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Posting for the first time in a while partly so I can find my old posts which had some feedback on the subject, but also because I'm finally (five years after I started it) going to put together a proper, professional-looking PDF of my second retroclone, which has had some more development done on it. :toot:

More news soon.

Also, holy poo poo at how good some of the AI artwork generated by Bing Image Creator is. :stare:

I initially thought "I don't have time to draw a load of stuff myself, I'll use AI to render a few pics of skulls and treasure chests and creepy caves to make the page look a bit more interesting." If I'd only used Craiyon that would have been the case, but then I tried BIC. A weekend and over a thousand pieces of generated art later...

# ¿ Apr 25, 2023 21:36

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Angrymog posted:

AI art is massively controversial ATM because of how its base images are sourced.

I think it's fine to put together things for a home game, or possibly to use the output as a springboard for your own work, but using the output for a commercial project is going to get people's backs up

It's not going to be a commercial product, don't worry. If it's anything like my previous retroclone, the number of people who even see it, never mind play it, will probably only be in double figures! (How many people here remember There's Always A Chance? I know one goon DM'd it, but beyond that, :shrug:

)

The funny thing with the AI art was that it would usually be pretty generic pseudo-oil painted stuff, but occasionally something would come out that made me go "that was totally trained on Josh Kirby", or Simon Bisley or whoever. Also random nudity or blatantly porn-originated stuff very infrequently popped up, like when I asked for something like "witch in black clothing sitting in dark dungeon room" and the result looked like it had come straight from someone's Fetlife profile.

Small Strange Bird fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Apr 26, 2023

# ¿ Apr 26, 2023 17:39

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Halloween Jack posted:

TAAC and YAMIAT are rock-solid design work.

Thank you! There have been some tweaks to YAMIAT since the version I put up here a couple of years back, so hopefully it should be even better when I get this fancy PDF done. (I'm thinking "Retro-Flavoured Rapid Action Roleplaying" as a tag line for the cover.)

# ¿ Apr 26, 2023 20:31

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Just found that my version of InDesign (CS2 running on a 2007 MacBook, because I already had it after Adobe gave it away as a free download years ago but never got round to learning how to use until now) crashes every. Single. Time I try to export my YAMIAT document as a PDF, even only a single page as a test. So that's hosed, unless I pay for a CC subscription on my newer computer (or shell out for Quark XPress, which I already know how to use).

Anyway, here's a lovely-quality screencap of what the cover would have/hopefully will eventually look like.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2023 16:38

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Arivia posted:

try using the built in mac option to print it to a pdf file?

Went back and tried this; it still crashes. gently caress's sake. Looks like my free game is going to cost me at least �20 to do as I want it. Sure, I could do a text-only version or bodge something together in Word, but after going this far I want it to look nice, dammit!

Edit: I just thought up the most ludicrous workflow system, but after a couple of tests it looks like it should work: do the basic layout and text flow in QuarkXpress 3.31 on my ancient iBook (I hadn't used Quark in 20 years, but created the master pages in five minutes that it had taken days for me to puzzle out in InDesign), import the .qxd file into InDesign CS2 to put in the pictures and pretty it up, save it as a package, get a 7-day free trial of InDesign CC, import, save as PDF. I'm sure nothing could go wrong at any stage!

Small Strange Bird fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Apr 28, 2023

# ¿ Apr 28, 2023 17:00

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Here. We. Fuckin'. Go.

Dropbox link to the .zip of the completed You All Meet In A Tavern. It only took me five years to complete! So what do you get in the package?

� PDFs of the completed rules in both spread (for laptops/printing) and single-page (for phones/tablets) formats.
� PDFs of a sample adventure, Path Of One Thousand Prayers, in spread and single formats. Wrap up warm!
� Printable PDFs of the character sheets for the six classes.
� All nicely presented via InDesign with pics and stuff!

If you've read the earlier version of the rules, there are some changes, mostly to streamline things and give PCs a boost in play. Why have a miracle that gives you advantage on your Checks for (say) fire resistance, when it could just make you temporarily immune to fire with no messing around?

Anyway, let me know what you think!

Edit: just spotted a mistake on one of the character sheets - d'oh! Will fix it tomorrow and put up a new link. :argh:

Edit edit: new download link added.

Small Strange Bird fucked around with this message at 10:21 on May 11, 2023

# ¿ May 10, 2023 23:42

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 06:11

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Shanty posted:

I always thought cleave should go the other way. As long as you hit something and it's not a killing blow, you can carry on to the next thing until you either miss or plant your sword in something so hard it dies.

I wonder how balanced that would feel at the table.

That's pretty much what I did in You All Meet In A Tavern; excess damage is (automatically) carried over to another target, then potentially another, and another, until it's used up. The suggestion for the rule is that the excess goes to the enemy of the same type as the original target with the most HP, so it softens up the strongest opponents for the rest of the party, but it's the GM's choice.

Since Warriors can double their total damage as an encounter ability (even after they make the damage roll), and there are a whole bunch of damage bonuses available as well, cleaving can really winnow enemy numbers.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2023 16:01

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Old-school D&D/Retroclones: (Rolls the die, but it doesn't matter what the result is)