I'll have to watch that. My read-through of Spire left me with the impression of:
Very cool setting
Super cool classes
Easy to make adventure hooks, since your players are urban guerillas
The harm/consequence system seems like a nightmare to deal with
I'll have to watch that. My read-through of Spire left me with the impression of:
Very cool setting
Super cool classes
Easy to make adventure hooks, since your players are urban guerillas
The harm/consequence system seems like a nightmare to deal with
He thought the setting was also the biggest challenge, as there's just so much and your players are supposed to be natives of the land, so they should act like it. He kinda felt like Alexa reading Wikipedia pages out loud.
He didn't mention the nightmare of handling the consequences system, but it seems like he was at a table with enthusiastic and/or experienced TTRPG players.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Yeah, I think Spire is some of the most evocative fantasy on the market right now and is a great example of the value of specificity in genre fiction. Looking at a class in Spire I will have a character halfway written in my head before I've even finished the full description.
But the systems are a bit clunky. I get the intention, and I think the push your luck element is an interesting one, but it's not always good at generating fiction.
at a minimum please enjoy the final segment of that review which is quinns blowing through every roleplaying system he's ever had a campaign in from worst memories to best memories
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
I'll have to watch that. My read-through of Spire left me with the impression of:
Very cool setting
Super cool classes
Easy to make adventure hooks, since your players are urban guerillas
The harm/consequence system seems like a nightmare to deal with
He thought the setting was also the biggest challenge, as there's just so much and your players are supposed to be natives of the land, so they should act like it. He kinda felt like Alexa reading Wikipedia pages out loud.
He didn't mention the nightmare of handling the consequences system, but it seems like he was at a table with enthusiastic and/or experienced TTRPG players.
Yeah, I can definitely see that. I've had plenty of that problem with Blades in the Dark already.
The thing with blades (haven’t watched the spire yet) is you get to resist the narrative consequences.
Which is such a good story telling trick it’s amazing.
You get to describe how that hammer blow absolutely mangled the players hand and broke every bone and get all nasty, and then the player gets to go “nope fuck that resist”
You get to know the narrative stakes and fear without actually inflicting it.
It’s like that little voice in your brain that goes “man don’t fall off that cliff” when standing next to a cliff. It’s the best.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
I think that Blades’ setting is much easier to gel with than Spire’s.
‘Old London Crime but there’s ghosts’ gets players most of the way there.
Oh I don't disagree
That was more of a like, "I've already got players asking those sorts of questions with a setting that's relatively simpler, I can imagine it's way worse with one as intricate as Spire"
As like, a quick scene write up: Ace, an ex hitman for the Italian mob whose talents are being loaned out to Panopticon Unit 01 through the Prison Labour Market Program. He's tasked with patrolling an appartment building alongside an ongoing demonstration between war refugee's and Daily Mail readers. Koshka, the Russian military secretary AI that Panopticon uses (because it's me, the one Left Alive enjoyer), chimes in that the protests are turning violent and asks him to get a better view.
So round 1 of the situation: Every PC makes a move, then threats act.
Ace, obviously, wants to get a better vantage point. An easy way to do that would be to use Panopticon credentials or basic hacking to get an appartment door open and to a window. This is basic for an action and wouldn't need any dice. However players love rolling and Ace wants a proper vantage point so he says he's making a break up several flights of stairs to the roof.
You can literally see in that description where the problem comes from: several flights of stairs to the roof. So we'll roll his not particularly great athletics of 1 with 1 problem die for a pool of 1d10. He gets a two! Not bad but not great. The GM declares that the stress is getting to him (Or maybe he's just winded) and he marks a scratch on his anchor. The GM also declares a fleeting problem manifesting that'll hamper the next agent to act, Ace in this case because it's a solo scene (hopefully everyone else is out investigating and finding actionable stuff in their scenes). The meager riot cops between the two crowds have deployed enough tear gas and smoke to make seeing the situation harder.
Then threats happen! There was no formal threat but obviously the general situation is one that progresses. In this case it's the Daily Mail crowd managing to grab a riot officer and drag him to be a bit of a hostage and try negotiate their way to being allowed to attack the refugee supporters.
Now it's Ace's turn! He wants to end the hostage situation with what he's good at: Shooting. It'd be a Long Range shot with a hostage in the way and, while Ace doesn't know this in character, the bad actor in this crowd is a trained soldier, not some shmuck. That's already 3 problems! Plus lets not forget the fleeting problem of the smoke in the air and our scratch on anchor for a total of five whole dice.
He could take a breather to rid himself of the fleeting problem and potentially the anchor stress too but Ace doesn't want to let the threat's escalate again.
So lets use some mechanics to fix that. First of all Ace spends funding to declare he's pulling his custom, perfectly engineered to his specs sniper rifle out of his bag and starting to click it together with trained hands. Not only does this asset give him a positive re-roll it also changes the fiction: Long range is less of an issue with a sniper. He also has his concept: Mob Sniper which obviously plays in so that's another positive re-roll.
So it's 4 dice but he's got 4 in marksmanship so that'll be on d4's and with two positive re-rolls (I need to name these better, Edge?Momentum, whatever) means he can re-roll all dice that show problems once (If he had a buddy to spot for him he could individually pick and choose dice for even better refinement).
1,1,1,2 Geez, lets fix that and re-roll all dice that show problems. In this case all of them.
3,4,2,1 for a result of 3. Well, this is an easy choice for the DM: Your task has unintended consequences, Ace taps the assailant clean through the head and the police line is re-formed safely around the distressed officer. However the bullet carried through and hit a second protestor in the leg and seem to be riling the crowd up even more.
From then on the threat would act, maybe at this point other agents would spend funding to do a rapid arrival and help mediate the situation better than a gun on a roof can etc etc.
I've been thinking about my Pantheon. For the past few years I've embraced a more monotheistic idea of godhood but I still sorta wanted there to be other gods. I've finally come to a decision as to how I want to get there. So as back story if you haven't read any of the posts I made about my world yet the main God(Sol for now but not sure it'll stick) is one of the last living beings of the old universe before the big bang. The main difference between divine magic and arcane magic is that divine magic exists outside the world. Its magic from an old universe. Sol's existence originally created a sort of immune response by the new world in the form of humans and the first human god that he has locked away. Humans don't know it but the literally exist to kill god. So with that stuff noted the god grouping goes like this.
The triad: Sol and his "sisters" from the old world named Estina and Eschre. Beings from the old world. The Chain: God's who started to rise up naturally out of the new world. They each express a core aspect of the world and its beings. Upon their creation they have been leashed to Sol's will. Their goals are the most mysterious and classically God like. They are believed to have conspired in the death of Sol. Ezekiel the Fifth Dawn: When Sol died his power was shattered. Now slivers of the power exist around the world and can be claimed. The first among them was Ezekiel who now rules a kingdom as God-Emperor through reincarnation. The Godslivers:Godlings who have collected a small chunk of Sol's power. Ezekiel hunts these gods to the ends of the earth and locks them in a prison called the eternity-snare. The first is known only as the Second who took the power just to prove that Ezekiel isn't the successor to Sol. Nyarlothotep: The corrupted human god who exists to kill the Gods from the previous universe.
I made it through halfway in the Aqc Inc book. It was fun! Definitely some fun stuff there.
I'm running the campaign at the moment
They've taken about six weeks on two pages, but that's probably my group rather than the campaign itself, and they're still having fun with the side stuff
I made it through halfway in the Aqc Inc book. It was fun! Definitely some fun stuff there.
I'm running the campaign at the moment
They've taken about six weeks on two pages, but that's probably my group rather than the campaign itself, and they're still having fun with the side stuff
Tell me more! I have the book right here and I love how they gamified downtime and how they fuck with the generally greedy RPG-player by leaning waaaay into other factions being equally greedy, but also very corporate.
Also could we get like, another 4 hours into the day, I have this massive pile of TTRPG reading material and I just don't have the time!
Looked up Wyrdwood Wand again after I re-figured out the name. Unfortunately it hasn't had any updates since June of last year. I did pop into the Discord and see the creator say they were still working on it in February, getting more playtest data. But still, pretty quiet.
In honour of retiring my definitely not Garak Imperial dancer/agent (she finally stepped fully across the line and attacked the group and their allies, so npc now) I got some art done of my new D&D character by Jen Pallante (she does nsfw art so heads up if you search her up).
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I made it through halfway in the Aqc Inc book. It was fun! Definitely some fun stuff there.
I'm running the campaign at the moment
They've taken about six weeks on two pages, but that's probably my group rather than the campaign itself, and they're still having fun with the side stuff
Tell me more! I have the book right here and I love how they gamified downtime and how they fuck with the generally greedy RPG-player by leaning waaaay into other factions being equally greedy, but also very corporate.
Also could we get like, another 4 hours into the day, I have this massive pile of TTRPG reading material and I just don't have the time!
One thing I did that the book didn't was....
I turned the young copper dragon into a recurring character. She was enamored with the PCs and also saw them as a way to get her horde started. I did give her the ability to transform into a humanoid for brief periods. She became their informal spy master. If I needed to get the PCs any info it came through her. When they eventually claimed a keep for their base she moved into the basement. I used the keep from lost mines as its perfectly set up for a fixer upper home base.
Oh yea, i based her character on Samantha from sex and the city, at least the socialite aspects.
Goofy idea: Some of the best sci-fi or urban fantasy tv is the 'letting people into the secret' episodes. Stargate having diplomats step through the gate for the first time or Grimm introing the secret to new people.
So what if an RPG's first session is about like, playing those guys during the emergency and answering questions.
"Who has weapons training?!" Whoever puts their hands up gains that as a skill.
"Shit we're in a bad spot here, how do we fix it?" Someone volunteers for engineering or computing
Like a rapid fire tutorial/session 0 with 'level 0' characters. Maybe even likely to kill them then other people fill in with normal char gen as trained soldiers/people experienced in the setting.
Not out of any sense of loyalty or morality, purely out of selfishness. "I know you would always spare my life, and that means you are more valuable to me alive."
One less adversary the villain feels compelled to worry too much about; the heroes aren't really a threat, because they'll always let him live to get revenge.
AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
Quasi-random question:
Anyone here have experience with filming/projecting board game tables?
We did board game lunch at work finally on Wednesday, after 2+ years of pandemic distancing. I finally got to play Space Base again... but we had a full table of 7 players. Plus, people were fairly spread out. So every time it got to people's turns, they had to stand up, look at the market/shipyards, and pour over everything. This naturally slowed things down.
In my ideal world, I'd have a camera overhead, filming the main table area such that you can see what's available. And honestly, I could use this for a LOT of games.
My first thought is a tripod along with a weighted boom arm, combined with my cell phone and a battery pack. I want to get a nice one though, as well as one that is ideally portable, light, and has a wide adjustment range. I don't need to worry about audio.
Got invited to play a game tomorrow with a couple of my close friends from high school that I've only ever played D&D with once, and a friend or two of theirs I don't know.
It's for a game called Old School Essentials, which is basically a mix of B/X D&D and 1e AD&D, with a light sprinkling of some more modern elements. Like there's an option to instead of THAC0 you use AC and attack rolls like how 5e does, which they're going to be using tomorrow thank fuck. My buddy is DMing, and he's always wanted to play this kind of hardcore dungeon crawling roleplaying game and wasn't a fan of 5e and it's more player-friendly, less lethal power fantasy (he also isn't a fan of basically any non-humans except maybe dwarves and halflings, and he despises the custom lineage rules in Tasha's. Oh, and tieflings, dude hates tieflings so much for some reason). Anyways, he's having us roll 3d6 for each stat, but he is letting us use max HP. He trusted me to roll at home and I said fuck it, I'll roll 3d6 down the line and take what I'm given. Turns out I have terrible luck and rolled:
STR 08
INT 09
WIS 12
DEX 12
CON 09
CHA 14
Then he let us take a secondary skill (kinda like backgrounds, from 5e) so I rolled a d100 got lorimer! I had to look up what that even was, and it's apparently someone that made the small metal parts for tack and bits and other horsey-related things. Adjacent to a farrier, basically.
So anyways, I lowered his wisdom by 2 so I could increase his dex by 1 and then I chose the acrobat class. Kinda like the thief class, but obviously with more of a focus on jumping and climbing. And since I'm an acrobat and he's letting us take max HP at first level instead of rolling, I get to have a whopping 4 HP! I'm definitely going to fucking die tomorrow lol. I wanted to be a halfling but they can only be druids*, fighters, and thieves (*at DMs discretion), and even then they can only reach level 6 as a druid or fighter, and only level 8 as a thief. So I said fuck it, I'll be human.
The system seems weird, but it's basically just cribbing directly from old D&D so not too surprising I guess. Any of y'all familiar with it? Anything to watch out for, or tips on play?
Ad&d is very slow leveling wise, hopefully it doesn't use the progression from it.
It probably does, and each class levels at different rates too. Also, it has an option to do the whole "non-humans are a class" thing that B/X did. Luckily we're using the AD&D-based "class and race are separate" rules.
And only having 4hp seems pretty normal for this. Most classes would have 6, a few would have 8, and around five of them would only have 4.
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
An old-school style game is going to depend a lot on how the GM wants to run it. The old school D&D that we imagine (a fighter, cleric, third, and mage walk into a dungeon) is very different from the game that was played (6-10 players + a small army of hirelings strip local cave of everything it’s worth) and the ruleset alone doesn’t tell you which you’re playing.
So the best advice I could give is to find out what kind of old school game your GM wants to run.
Assuming the DM is going real old school, gold and ONLY gold is XP
This means that fighting enemies, unless enemies have gold, or let you get to gold, is not worthwhile. Slip past enemies, run away from enemies, scare enemies off, and so on.
On the other hand, spending hours with a chisel to scrape all of the silver detailing out of an engraving in a wall? Sweet sweet XP baby!!!!
I don't know about the rest of that system(fighting not having any real class features was annoying enough in 3.5) but I found the dungeon-delving rules themselves robust and I'm excited to use them in my 5e game.
You know, it's really kinda funny. I've been running a bit of pathfinder 2 and I'm starting to feel like they tuned the whole "spellcasters are too powerful" that's been here since D&D2 slightly too hard in the other direction, at least early on.
I'm currently trying to tweak this module to let my Sorcerer player actually feel like it's worth his time to cast his spells!
Assuming the DM is going real old school, gold and ONLY gold is XP
This means that fighting enemies, unless enemies have gold, or let you get to gold, is not worthwhile. Slip past enemies, run away from enemies, scare enemies off, and so on.
On the other hand, spending hours with a chisel to scrape all of the silver detailing out of an engraving in a wall? Sweet sweet XP baby!!!!
He only sent us the OSE player's handbook pdf which doesn't say, so I don't know how the DM will calculate XP since this system is only based off of Basic and Advanced D&D but isn't them. A lot of it is the same, but there are some differences and I don't want to make any assumptions. Even still, I'm gonna be all about slipping past enemies. I'm an acrobat so I only have leather armor, can't use a shield, have a -1 to my melee attacks, and I only have 4 hit points! Gonna be sneaking around a lot, and when combat happens I'm gonna be running away and then shooting at them with my bow (or using my sling if I'm using my other hand to hold something)
The book does mention that the OSE system is compatible with most B/X and 1e AD&D modules though, so I'll let the DM know about my copy of the B/X Hollow World campaign setting if he wants to use it or just use it for inspiration
For 2e, spellcasters can't compete with martials at single target damage. They're definitely better at dealing with groups, so you can lean into that once they have more AoE options (which is either 2nd or 3rd level spells, depending on what books are being used and what spell list they're on).
Stuff weak to fire, etc. is also a good way to give them something to do as most martials cant focus a weakness like that early. If they have Heal, a bunch of undead is just begging for the 3-action version.
Edit: At very low level though Magic Weapon is basically the best spell though. Martial classes do start off a bit better because the aforementioned spell selection stuff... so upgrading their weapon is significant until they get an equivalent one.
2e has an itemization problem for spellcasters. You have no way to boost attack rolls or saves and enemy saves in general are a bit too high. Try giving them weapon rune equivalents.
My buddy is DMing, and he's always wanted to play this kind of hardcore dungeon crawling roleplaying game and wasn't a fan of 5e and it's more player-friendly, less lethal power fantasy (he also isn't a fan of basically any non-humans except maybe dwarves and halflings, and he despises the custom lineage rules in Tasha's. Oh, and tieflings, dude hates tieflings so much for some reason).
Just a heads up but an irrational hatred of tieflings is a common right-wing OSR meme. Explanation in spoilers for description of what you can probably guess it is (standard right-wing targets).
It started with chuds associating tieflings with LGBT+ people and grew out from there as a reactionary meme. At this point a lot of people don't know its origins and sort of use it as an anti-new-games thing, blaming everything about character options on the one race as an icon.
So, you know, maybe talk to your buddy about the people he's hanging out with, if you feel like that's appropriate.
(Poisoning my brain with knowledge like this is one of the hazards of enjoying old-school gameplay.)
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Origin ID: Discgolfer27
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This was supposed to be an edit. Woops.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Cross-posting from Critical Failures.
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Very cool setting
Super cool classes
Easy to make adventure hooks, since your players are urban guerillas
The harm/consequence system seems like a nightmare to deal with
He thought the setting was also the biggest challenge, as there's just so much and your players are supposed to be natives of the land, so they should act like it. He kinda felt like Alexa reading Wikipedia pages out loud.
He didn't mention the nightmare of handling the consequences system, but it seems like he was at a table with enthusiastic and/or experienced TTRPG players.
But the systems are a bit clunky. I get the intention, and I think the push your luck element is an interesting one, but it's not always good at generating fiction.
Yeah, I can definitely see that. I've had plenty of that problem with Blades in the Dark already.
‘Old London Crime but there’s ghosts’ gets players most of the way there.
Which is such a good story telling trick it’s amazing.
You get to describe how that hammer blow absolutely mangled the players hand and broke every bone and get all nasty, and then the player gets to go “nope fuck that resist”
You get to know the narrative stakes and fear without actually inflicting it.
It’s like that little voice in your brain that goes “man don’t fall off that cliff” when standing next to a cliff. It’s the best.
Oh I don't disagree
That was more of a like, "I've already got players asking those sorts of questions with a setting that's relatively simpler, I can imagine it's way worse with one as intricate as Spire"
First the playtest docs:
Sloppy Rules doc
Char Sheet that's actually pretty tight except for the health tracks
So round 1 of the situation: Every PC makes a move, then threats act.
Ace, obviously, wants to get a better vantage point. An easy way to do that would be to use Panopticon credentials or basic hacking to get an appartment door open and to a window. This is basic for an action and wouldn't need any dice. However players love rolling and Ace wants a proper vantage point so he says he's making a break up several flights of stairs to the roof.
You can literally see in that description where the problem comes from: several flights of stairs to the roof. So we'll roll his not particularly great athletics of 1 with 1 problem die for a pool of 1d10. He gets a two! Not bad but not great. The GM declares that the stress is getting to him (Or maybe he's just winded) and he marks a scratch on his anchor. The GM also declares a fleeting problem manifesting that'll hamper the next agent to act, Ace in this case because it's a solo scene (hopefully everyone else is out investigating and finding actionable stuff in their scenes). The meager riot cops between the two crowds have deployed enough tear gas and smoke to make seeing the situation harder.
Then threats happen! There was no formal threat but obviously the general situation is one that progresses. In this case it's the Daily Mail crowd managing to grab a riot officer and drag him to be a bit of a hostage and try negotiate their way to being allowed to attack the refugee supporters.
Now it's Ace's turn! He wants to end the hostage situation with what he's good at: Shooting. It'd be a Long Range shot with a hostage in the way and, while Ace doesn't know this in character, the bad actor in this crowd is a trained soldier, not some shmuck. That's already 3 problems! Plus lets not forget the fleeting problem of the smoke in the air and our scratch on anchor for a total of five whole dice.
He could take a breather to rid himself of the fleeting problem and potentially the anchor stress too but Ace doesn't want to let the threat's escalate again.
So lets use some mechanics to fix that. First of all Ace spends funding to declare he's pulling his custom, perfectly engineered to his specs sniper rifle out of his bag and starting to click it together with trained hands. Not only does this asset give him a positive re-roll it also changes the fiction: Long range is less of an issue with a sniper. He also has his concept: Mob Sniper which obviously plays in so that's another positive re-roll.
So it's 4 dice but he's got 4 in marksmanship so that'll be on d4's and with two positive re-rolls (I need to name these better, Edge?Momentum, whatever) means he can re-roll all dice that show problems once (If he had a buddy to spot for him he could individually pick and choose dice for even better refinement).
1,1,1,2 Geez, lets fix that and re-roll all dice that show problems. In this case all of them.
3,4,2,1 for a result of 3. Well, this is an easy choice for the DM: Your task has unintended consequences, Ace taps the assailant clean through the head and the police line is re-formed safely around the distressed officer. However the bullet carried through and hit a second protestor in the leg and seem to be riling the crowd up even more.
From then on the threat would act, maybe at this point other agents would spend funding to do a rapid arrival and help mediate the situation better than a gun on a roof can etc etc.
The triad: Sol and his "sisters" from the old world named Estina and Eschre. Beings from the old world.
The Chain: God's who started to rise up naturally out of the new world. They each express a core aspect of the world and its beings. Upon their creation they have been leashed to Sol's will. Their goals are the most mysterious and classically God like. They are believed to have conspired in the death of Sol.
Ezekiel the Fifth Dawn: When Sol died his power was shattered. Now slivers of the power exist around the world and can be claimed. The first among them was Ezekiel who now rules a kingdom as God-Emperor through reincarnation.
The Godslivers:Godlings who have collected a small chunk of Sol's power. Ezekiel hunts these gods to the ends of the earth and locks them in a prison called the eternity-snare. The first is known only as the Second who took the power just to prove that Ezekiel isn't the successor to Sol.
Nyarlothotep: The corrupted human god who exists to kill the Gods from the previous universe.
I'm running the campaign at the moment
They've taken about six weeks on two pages, but that's probably my group rather than the campaign itself, and they're still having fun with the side stuff
Tell me more! I have the book right here and I love how they gamified downtime and how they fuck with the generally greedy RPG-player by leaning waaaay into other factions being equally greedy, but also very corporate.
Also could we get like, another 4 hours into the day, I have this massive pile of TTRPG reading material and I just don't have the time!
One thing I did that the book didn't was....
Oh yea, i based her character on Samantha from sex and the city, at least the socialite aspects.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
So what if an RPG's first session is about like, playing those guys during the emergency and answering questions.
"Who has weapons training?!" Whoever puts their hands up gains that as a skill.
"Shit we're in a bad spot here, how do we fix it?" Someone volunteers for engineering or computing
Like a rapid fire tutorial/session 0 with 'level 0' characters. Maybe even likely to kill them then other people fill in with normal char gen as trained soldiers/people experienced in the setting.
A villain who always spares the hero's life.
Not out of any sense of loyalty or morality, purely out of selfishness. "I know you would always spare my life, and that means you are more valuable to me alive."
One less adversary the villain feels compelled to worry too much about; the heroes aren't really a threat, because they'll always let him live to get revenge.
Anyone here have experience with filming/projecting board game tables?
We did board game lunch at work finally on Wednesday, after 2+ years of pandemic distancing. I finally got to play Space Base again... but we had a full table of 7 players. Plus, people were fairly spread out. So every time it got to people's turns, they had to stand up, look at the market/shipyards, and pour over everything. This naturally slowed things down.
In my ideal world, I'd have a camera overhead, filming the main table area such that you can see what's available. And honestly, I could use this for a LOT of games.
My first thought is a tripod along with a weighted boom arm, combined with my cell phone and a battery pack. I want to get a nice one though, as well as one that is ideally portable, light, and has a wide adjustment range. I don't need to worry about audio.
It's for a game called Old School Essentials, which is basically a mix of B/X D&D and 1e AD&D, with a light sprinkling of some more modern elements. Like there's an option to instead of THAC0 you use AC and attack rolls like how 5e does, which they're going to be using tomorrow thank fuck. My buddy is DMing, and he's always wanted to play this kind of hardcore dungeon crawling roleplaying game and wasn't a fan of 5e and it's more player-friendly, less lethal power fantasy (he also isn't a fan of basically any non-humans except maybe dwarves and halflings, and he despises the custom lineage rules in Tasha's. Oh, and tieflings, dude hates tieflings so much for some reason). Anyways, he's having us roll 3d6 for each stat, but he is letting us use max HP. He trusted me to roll at home and I said fuck it, I'll roll 3d6 down the line and take what I'm given. Turns out I have terrible luck and rolled:
Then he let us take a secondary skill (kinda like backgrounds, from 5e) so I rolled a d100 got lorimer! I had to look up what that even was, and it's apparently someone that made the small metal parts for tack and bits and other horsey-related things. Adjacent to a farrier, basically.
So anyways, I lowered his wisdom by 2 so I could increase his dex by 1 and then I chose the acrobat class. Kinda like the thief class, but obviously with more of a focus on jumping and climbing. And since I'm an acrobat and he's letting us take max HP at first level instead of rolling, I get to have a whopping 4 HP! I'm definitely going to fucking die tomorrow lol. I wanted to be a halfling but they can only be druids*, fighters, and thieves (*at DMs discretion), and even then they can only reach level 6 as a druid or fighter, and only level 8 as a thief. So I said fuck it, I'll be human.
The system seems weird, but it's basically just cribbing directly from old D&D so not too surprising I guess. Any of y'all familiar with it? Anything to watch out for, or tips on play?
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I hope the DM agrees, because I sense a lot of people playing old school dungeon crawlers think you should complete the dungeon.
It probably does, and each class levels at different rates too. Also, it has an option to do the whole "non-humans are a class" thing that B/X did. Luckily we're using the AD&D-based "class and race are separate" rules.
And only having 4hp seems pretty normal for this. Most classes would have 6, a few would have 8, and around five of them would only have 4.
So the best advice I could give is to find out what kind of old school game your GM wants to run.
This means that fighting enemies, unless enemies have gold, or let you get to gold, is not worthwhile. Slip past enemies, run away from enemies, scare enemies off, and so on.
On the other hand, spending hours with a chisel to scrape all of the silver detailing out of an engraving in a wall? Sweet sweet XP baby!!!!
I'm currently trying to tweak this module to let my Sorcerer player actually feel like it's worth his time to cast his spells!
Fragile and pretty weak, or at least very limited, early on. In exchange you were bonkers at higher levels compared to martial focused characters.
He only sent us the OSE player's handbook pdf which doesn't say, so I don't know how the DM will calculate XP since this system is only based off of Basic and Advanced D&D but isn't them. A lot of it is the same, but there are some differences and I don't want to make any assumptions. Even still, I'm gonna be all about slipping past enemies. I'm an acrobat so I only have leather armor, can't use a shield, have a -1 to my melee attacks, and I only have 4 hit points! Gonna be sneaking around a lot, and when combat happens I'm gonna be running away and then shooting at them with my bow (or using my sling if I'm using my other hand to hold something)
The book does mention that the OSE system is compatible with most B/X and 1e AD&D modules though, so I'll let the DM know about my copy of the B/X Hollow World campaign setting if he wants to use it or just use it for inspiration
Stuff weak to fire, etc. is also a good way to give them something to do as most martials cant focus a weakness like that early. If they have Heal, a bunch of undead is just begging for the 3-action version.
Edit: At very low level though Magic Weapon is basically the best spell though. Martial classes do start off a bit better because the aforementioned spell selection stuff... so upgrading their weapon is significant until they get an equivalent one.
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Just a heads up but an irrational hatred of tieflings is a common right-wing OSR meme. Explanation in spoilers for description of what you can probably guess it is (standard right-wing targets).
So, you know, maybe talk to your buddy about the people he's hanging out with, if you feel like that's appropriate.
(Poisoning my brain with knowledge like this is one of the hazards of enjoying old-school gameplay.)
DIESEL
Against the Fall of Night Playtest
Nasty, Brutish, and Short
Tbf though I don’t really like Aasimar either.
Just not that into “bloodlines” in general.