Recent content by Andvari

I play in dungeon turns behind the screen, when the party is exploring a dungeon or dungeon-like environment, but my players are not aware of it directly. The players are aware that the longer time they spend at a location, the more wandering monster encounters they might have, however. Working...

Kobolds because they are small and can thus live in tunnels too small for medium-sized PCs to stand up, because you can come up with all sorts of devious traps. You can mix them up with dangerous trained animals or larger monsters. Hobgoblins because of their militaristic nature. So they can...

I suspect you are primed for role-playing if you are a critter, and primed for roll-playing if you solely know D&D from BG3.

I know Pathfinder 2E has that, but it's still only one of those workarounds that are open to scenarios where it doesn't make sense. For example, first one player wants to attempt, and the other player doesn't offer to aid, or isn't able to, as he is in another room. Then after this first attempt...

We're also compounding the issue with the "piling on" of rolls, which I'm not sure is necessarily an issue with skills, although perhaps they make it more obvious. I think it's a fair ruling to say that if the high Int guy trained in the skill can't do it, then others can't, but you still run...

It never came up back when I played, but I would have enforced it.

If you don't want your door to be picked or broken down, you can put in an alternative type of "lock." Like having slots shaped so only certain items held by someone elsewhere in the dungeon, or a lever in a separate location operating it. I think a good example of OSR design is that of an...

I think when OSR-style games or gamers refer to "player skill" they mean the player's abilities to think of solutions to obstacles in the game world, rather than physical skills, like real-life ability to pick a lock. That's why attacks are resolved by dice rolling but tactical decisions are...

Plus, if the guy in the Basic set is supposed to be level 1-3, he is clearly dead by the time you pick up the Expert set, considering he's charging towards what appears to be a huge red dragon.

Shadowdark avoids the mistake of describing the ability score as your character's ability to reason and process information, but maybe it should have been given another name. Just the fact that it is called "Intelligence" is already putting a lot of meaning into the mind of the reader. So I...

There is of course some element of luck, but as a GM you can do a lot to improve your group. If you pick up some random 4-5 people, most of them will probably be suitable, but you might have that 1 guy who's always late and that 1 girl who somehow causes tense social situations regularly. So you...

If you've ever played SSI's Krynn series of CRPGs (using AD&D rules), you know how delicious chain-exploding Draconians can be.

The Basic DM has run an adventure or two, probably official adventures, or even mediocre, homebrewed adventures that everyone still enjoyed, and for the most part, survived. The Expert DM has gone beyond "read the module", and has not only run adventures, but is already taken the players into...

Just make sure to abandon it when you are about 50% done so you can start making your own role-playing system instead. Then you will have hit peak GMing.