Search results

Personally I only give XP for "Treasure recovered from the dungeon or wilderness and treasure granted as a bounty or reward" on a 1GP to 1XP basis. I don't give XP for magic items, or overcoming monsters. If find this keeps my games more focused on finding gold, rather then fighting, though of...

This seems a rather cynical take. While it is obvious that OD&D was intended to be a skirmish wargame to some degree, its failure to become that (even during publication - see the late addition of the alternate combat system) shows that it really is something else. While for some I'm sure it's...

Of course - I was part of those people building classes - here's the most recent time I did so for an HMS Apollyon playtest. Some OD&Dified Vikings: HMS Apollyon Viking Character Generation Rules I am less enthused by this sort of thing now, though the idea of taking Basic as the totality...

Too me this seems like an awful lot of classes still... I've run old school/old style games with many classes and it never really felt worth it because only when the game itself has significant crunch do the mechanics of a class matter much. In something like OSE there's just not a huge amount...

Oh it wasn't a matter of editing and great thought - it was not having the books. I had Basic, my friend had Expert and over the next two years I got the Monster Manual (before we'd copy out monsters from the library copy) and PHB from the thrift store. Got the DMG last. Basically whenever...

What I find interesting about things like OSE Advanced (or any AD&D style add-ons to B/X clones) is how they effectively replicate how I played D&D in the 1980's. A bit of AD&D this and that from whatever edition was around supported by a B/X and BECMI foundation. I should add that this "old...

Oh I've certainly used it in B/X and as you say it can be very fun when there's a wave of low HD attackers (feral halflings I remember in an old ASE game), but again it's quite situational and I like to farm situational abilities (weird spells, consumable magic items etc) off to the players...

Oh I'm certainly not claiming any Pathfinder knowledge. I don't play it and likely won't given I'm not a tactical combat or Contemporary Traditional fan. So cleave is part of the basic Fighter kit in PF (or is it for everyone?). This strikes me as an interesting design choice but potentially...

Honest question - isn't Pathfinder already a fairly feats heavy system? Does it need additional tactical combat rules? Especially if those rules exist outside the existing character building mini-game? I get why people use cleave rules as a fighter add-on in things like OD&D or B/X and all of...

These sorts of rules - generally "Cleave Rules" were very common in the OSR period, frequently used in G+ games, or referenced on blogs. There were lots of ways of dealing with them. It's quite a situational advantage, but it's situational, hardly a defining class feature. Plus, if one is...

My suspicion is that it will be an entirely NEW Greyhawk... The trappings of Greyhawk ... and Forgotten Realms, Blackmoor, and The Known World (Mystara)... are rather interchangeable at the basic level. There are of course distinctions, but the peoples, factions, technology, magic, and monsters...

Right, compatibility is great! Everything I write is compatible with a game from 1981 and so converted to things based on that either without change (OSE, Lab Lord) or with trivial change - most other OSR systems. Great - I wouldn't use these rules ... unless they were useful to the specific...

No shade to cast on this system, and the design looks excellent - but I reamin baffled by designers choice to make ever more B/X/AD&D/OD&D clones. I honestly can't think of a reason why one wouldn't look to this for OSR style play ... but I can't really think of why one WOULD look to it either...

Seem like a lot of world building (demographics and such) for what is essentially a point on your map that the party will pass through. Rather then start from "how many elves" and "who are their allies" and such it's often good to start with "What kind of adventure do I want to run here"? If...

Sure and maybe? The fairytale setting gloss has been around a while. In the Mid OSR days gonzo and grimdark battled it out for official "OSR" aesthetic and I guess grimdark largely won. It's never been the only thing though? Currently dark fairytale has a bit of an upsurge, and it's not a bad...

Makes sense! Thanks for responding! My reply is that I think you're conceiving of playing a campaign where you A) intend to go from 1st - 36th level and B) things like picking locks and opening the doors will be both equally challenging and equally important throughout the campaign this makes...

Why? I'm honestly curious why how you feel this would be broken in play - no shade or criticism intended. I believe that it would be bad in your game - I just want to know how you are playing that makes it a problem? For me, as noted above, the way I tend to handle simple, mostly mechanical...

Thief skills have always been a funny fit, but I don't have a problem with OSE's use of the X in 6 method (I first saw this in LotFP which I think popularized it). In general thief skills fall mostly into an issue of how one plays. X in 6 is likely better for lower level play but a few levels...

For many yes. There are however ways (slot encumbrance, good turnkeeping or overloaded encounter dice) that allow for Dungeons with fewer keys, but they need some design changes as well. A Jewelbox dungeon can work, but I think the lower limit is somewhere around 10 - 20 keyed locations. It's...

Oh I agree - and I won't say that a game with complex rules for exploration can't do it. Only that it's not the way OD&D manages it (though it has a solid set of rules for exploration - likely better then any subsequent edition of D&D or any other system I've seen honestly - maybe Errant gets...