Search results

I'm sure the map will be pretty, Greg hires talented artists. I do wonder if it will be a copy of the Wilderness Survival Map? My understanding is that his past work has all been placed on this 1970's map, a popular conceit in the early and mid OSR. For example I believe Dwimmermount was also...

Yes this is true - many designers seem to focus on creating a game ecosystem around their products. It's a savy business move, a walled garden for your fans who don't then have to use (or buy) anyone else's work ... It's just not something I think is very good or interesting ... it's a business...

So first, designers' politics do matter to me. There are some designers who voice beliefs that want to deny basic human rights to people I care about. I don't want to give those people money and I don't promote them. I think this is good. It's good because platforming these people drives those...

there are a lot of rumors about the guy - I don't know if they are true. Rumors about incentivizing students to give his books high ratings and such as well. My own experience is that I have read Barrowmaze (decent for its era with some really nice bits and pieces) and Dwarrowdeep. Dwarrowdeep...

Which OSR? There were several. Certainly the early Dragonsfoot forum types were often focused on a nostalgic return. It's hard to say the same thing for stuff like Deep Carbon Observatory, Mothership, and Into the Odd. Now we are in a post-OSR period and it's even more varied. Sure there's...

Get some factions in there and don't just randomly place everything, but don't fill it entirely with factions - there still should be some abandoned and vermin infested spaces. Add some actually significant amounts of treasure.

I think this is one of those "OSR" referee questions. No need for hermeneutics - especially from a handbook for a different game (and different from the one OSE is a retro-clone of). What I mean is question seems far more a matter of the fiction then digging through several editions of...

I don't have a recommendation between those two - but I would make the following recommendations about "OSR" play. * Read the adventure you're running at least once through a day or two prior to your session (or reread your design notes once they're finished). * Make a copy of the map and...

In thinking about this topic a bit more I suppose some of it comes down to what you see as the goal of the OSR? Was it primarily about rediscovering and figuring out how to play old games as they were meant to be played .. A revival or even return (RETVRN?) or Was it primarily about playing...

Exactly. Worrying about the impurities of 2E is a certain kind of Post-OSR revisionism. When the 2E "Complete Fighter's Handbook" came out in 1989, my friends and I had already been into D&D for 7 years - which is a lot when you're a kid, but we weren't suddenly concerned about a new...

Hey Rob! Thanks for the review of Prison and glad you liked it. Here's a couple answers to the questions you pose and a bit of history on the adventure. So... Prison of the Hated Pretender was first published back in August 2012. It was one of the first adventures I wrote for others back in...

See I take a less liberal approach there, I tend to view the LBBs as a complete text - that constitutes a minimally playable game (well mostly - with adaption). I also don't enjoy Chainmail's combat system - though it might be different if "parties" were more like warbands ... but then it...

So my edition of Chainmail has these fatigue rules on Page 11 ... for mass combat. They are not found in the man to man rules and no reference is made to them in the D&D alternate combat system or any subsequent edition. I would note that the effects are profoundly different in the chainmail...

Where are these OD&D fatigue rules? I'm curious?

I think there's some expansions by other people - or at least spell collections using the same system. Book of Gaub was I think the latest. I don't use the full system as I do like leveled spells, but it's a good one.

Personally I rather like the bolt on "leveless" spell system in Wonder & Wickedness. You can find it on Drive Thru, and it's quite elegant with a fairly small number of spells (all the spells found in the 1974 edition but all reskinned and broken into schools of magic), magic disasters and some...

The party's plans were complicated after the ancient lighthouse they had been exploring was set aflame in the night. Exploring it some days later they discovered that the tower had apparently been burned clean, presumably by local owl worshipping cultists enraged by the party's killing the...

I don't see these as needing to be measured in real life units of time. In RPGs one does not manage "clocks" by looking at a clock, one does so by counting some sort of turn. The acid burns for 1D6+1 rounds, the spell's duration is 6 turns etc... Even when (as in AD&D) these things are measured...

Absolutely - it's a great post! I've dipped my own toes into the "D&D combat how it should be" pool as well. 1) It should have followed the rules of Strategos (or DUNGEON!) 2) I like ranks and files ... but hate grid combat ... sorta? Hate having to have a battlemat? I actually use this second...