OSR Interested in dipping my toe into OSR but don’t know where to start. Any recommendations?

[Aldarc]

I watched Questing Beast’s review of the Black Hack, and the armor system definitely did sound weird, as did the dice system for tracking consumable resources. Much more abstract than I would have expected from OSR, but maybe that’s an outsider bias.

In actual play, both the armor rules and ammo die for the Black Hack are more intuitive than they read. The ammo rules reduce bookkeeping while also adding a certain degree of tension about running out of ammo, though this is resolved at the end of encounters rather than in battle.

 

[Charlaquin]

Lamentation of the Flame Princess: 1. James Raggi, the person who made it, is an alt-right type, 2. Much of its popular content is by one Zak S., serial abuser and toxic internet troll,

Oof. Yeah, I’ll be avoiding that, then. Thanks for the heads-up!

3. A lot of their products have an "edgy" grimdark aesthetic that seems to mistake shock-value for maturity. And ultimately it's just another b/x clone.

Gotcha. I’m fine with edgy, but yeah, sounds like this one’s probably a pass for me.

 

[Charlaquin]

In actual play, both the armor rules and ammo die for the Black Hack are more intuitive than they read. The ammo rules reduce bookkeeping while also adding a certain degree of tension about running out of ammo, though this is resolved at the end of encounters rather than in battle.

They don’t come across as unintuitive to me - shrinking dice to represent dwindling resources is something I’ve seen before and know can work well. It’s just not something I expected to see in an OSR game. Again, maybe that’s a misapprehension based in outsider bias. At any rate, it’s certainly not unwelcome, just unexpected.

 

[Charlaquin]

B/X had a dungeon time tracking system that was probably the best executed dungeon pressure system in the various D&D editions. Everything was interrelatedly tracked in easy to use 10 minute turns including searching, random encounters, torch duration, and combat. This tied into the primarily gold for xp system incentives as random encounters were dangerous with low gold and therefore low xp reward, which created an incentive to avoid dallying.

That’s all right up my alley. I’ve been using 10-minute dungeon exploration turns and 4-hour wilderness exploration turns in 5e for a while now and I love it. XP for gold is something I’ve long been curious about but have yet to try. Though I am thinking I’d rather cut out the middle-man and just have training to level up cost gold equal to the XP it would require to reach that level. But yeah, a desire for this type of play is exactly what lead me to start looking into OSR.

Encumbrance was optional, but allowed a trade off of armor and gear, loot, and speed.

I’m a strong proponent of encumbrance, but sometimes it can be like pulling teeth to get players to actually track it. A slot-based system or something streamlined like PF2’s Bulk would probably be ideal for me.

 

[thirdkingdom]

Yeah, that’s all right up my alley. I’ve been using 10-minute dungeon exploration turns and 4-hour wilderness exploration turns in 5e for a while now and I love it. XP for gold is something I’ve long been curious about but have yet to try. Though I am thinking I’d rather cut out the middle-man and just have training to level up cost gold equal to the XP it would require to reach that level. But yeah, a desire for this type of play is exactly what lead me to start looking into OSR.

Note that in OSR-style games all that gold serves a function as the adventurers gain level and start entering domain-level play. The trajectory is something like:

*1st level: "We're broke and can't even afford decent armor."
*2-4th level: "We've got more money than we know what to do with!"
*5th level+: "We're broke and can't afford to hire that second company of mercenaries"

At 4th level and higher the party should begin to venture out into the wider world, exploring more of the wilderness instead of just dungeons, and will begin to spend more and more money. Retainers and hirelings are expensive, but needed if you're traveling through the wilderness (note how the encounter sizes jump from dungeon to wilderness), they'll begin to spend money on stuff like houses, boats, commissioning magical items, etc., and eventually will start spending serious cash when they enter the domain phase of play.

 

[Voadam]

I’m a strong proponent of encumbrance, but sometimes it can be like pulling teeth to get players to actually track it. A slot-based system or something streamlined like PF2’s Bulk would probably be ideal for me.

I know there are a number of OSR systems I have read that do that type of thing for encumbrance but I could not say which ones.

 

[Voadam]

Note that in OSR-style games all that gold serves a function as the adventurers gain level and start entering domain-level play. The trajectory is something like:

*1st level: "We're broke and can't even afford decent armor."
*2-4th level: "We've got more money than we know what to do with!"
*5th level+: "We're broke and can't afford to hire that second company of mercenaries"

That depends on the OSR.

B/X gave starting characters 3d6 X 10 gp and plate mail cost 60 gp so most every fighter and cleric could start off with the strongest armor in the game and keep the same outfit their whole career instead of changing armored suits every couple of levels.

 

[Charlaquin]

Note that in OSR-style games all that gold serves a function as the adventurers gain level and start entering domain-level play. The trajectory is something like:

*1st level: "We're broke and can't even afford decent armor."
*2-4th level: "We've got more money than we know what to do with!"
*5th level+: "We're broke and can't afford to hire that second company of mercenaries"

At 4th level and higher the party should begin to venture out into the wider world, exploring more of the wilderness instead of just dungeons, and will begin to spend more and more money. Retainers and hirelings are expensive, but needed if you're traveling through the wilderness (note how the encounter sizes jump from dungeon to wilderness), they'll begin to spend money on stuff like houses, boats, commissioning magical items, etc., and eventually will start spending serious cash when they enter the domain phase of play.

Yeah, that’s definitely all stuff I want to incentivize. But, I’d also like some tension between paying for equipment, hirelings, etc. and paying for levels. It’s a dynamic I really like in Soulsborne games and would like to bring into my tabletop RPGs.

 

[Greggy C]

I bought the OSE, but I can't express how disappointed I was that it is a tiny book instead of the size of my old AD&D core books.

 

[Yora]

I’m a strong proponent of encumbrance, but sometimes it can be like pulling teeth to get players to actually track it. A slot-based system or something streamlined like PF2’s Bulk would probably be ideal for me.

I think encumbrance is absolutely mandatory for classic dungeon crawling and expedition play. Having to decide between security of supplies and amount of treasure to carry on one hand and travel speed (thus amount of random encounters) on the other hand is a key component of the exploration gameplay loop that does a good deal of the work to create tension.

The easiest system I've found is this:
Light load (20'): Items equal to Str
Medium load (30'): Items equal to Str x2
Heavy load (40'): Items equal to Stry x3
Single items smaller than daggers don't count for encumbrance. Items that need two hands to carry count as 2 items or more. 100 coins are one item.
(Mage spellcasting and most thief skills can only be done with light load but are unrestricted by armor.)