Good Old Days! (Private) (Inactive)

Game Master Edeldhur

And yep, my group also tried their hand at MERP/Rolemaster, and by some miraculous reason I managed to get my hands on a few precious sourcebooks like the Minas Tirith hardcover. Our endeavor was short lived though, and I would very much like to revisit Rolemaster as a player, since I was always the DM :)

Strange the books we end up with. Equally lucky am I for ending up with a copy of the Kin-Strife which takes place in Gondor in Third Age 1400’s (instead of TA 1600s) under the despotic rule of Castamir the Usurper. The Introduction makes it clear that the resistance to Castamir as detailed in the sourcebook is based on Dutch, Danish and French resistance to Germans in WWII and the opponents of the resistance (Castamir’s secret police) are based on Hapsburg secret police of the 15th Century. Wild stuff.

Strange the books we end up with. Equally lucky am I for ending up with a copy of the Kin-Strife which takes place in Gondor in Third Age 1400’s (instead of TA 1600s) under the despotic rule of Castamir the Usurper. The Introduction makes it clear that the resistance to Castamir as detailed in the sourcebook is based on Dutch, Danish and French resistance to Germans in WWII and the opponents of the resistance (Castamir’s secret police) are based on Hapsburg secret police of the 15th Century. Wild stuff.

That is pretty wild. One thing can definitely be said for the MERP sourcebooks and adventures - they are unique!

For my Night Below retread a 5E conversion exists, which cuts down on the admin. I've converted over some monsters to OSwR and they seem to work well in terms of crunch.

I was just going over the OSE ruleset and remembered - have you considered running your Night Below game using OSE Advanced? That should be a direct plug-in?

Edit: Nevermind, OSE Advanced is still B/X ‘power level’, so to speak. But have you considered other retroclones of AD&D? Like OSRIC or Adventures Dark and Deep?

Strange the books we end up with. Equally lucky am I for ending up with a copy of the Kin-Strife which takes place in Gondor in Third Age 1400’s (instead of TA 1600s) under the despotic rule of Castamir the Usurper. The Introduction makes it clear that the resistance to Castamir as detailed in the sourcebook is based on Dutch, Danish and French resistance to Germans in WWII and the opponents of the resistance (Castamir’s secret police) are based on Hapsburg secret police of the 15th Century. Wild stuff.

I will need to look that one up!

@Obermind: Aye I mulled a retroclone o' AD&D, but none of which really ticked my boxes.

I'm still having fun with Olde Swords as a foundation and there's heaps of 5E house rules I'm looking to bolt in to build essentially a bespoke offering that will be fun for me to run and fun for everyone who care to join the journey.

Interestingly I'm building the fluff and flavour and seeing what fits best for that in the game, and that's a process I'm enjoying massively.

As am I. I ran my own OSR clone with Oceanshielwolf and others… with some success. It needs some tweaking but I want to run it again, this time at a tabletop.

Also tweaking Warlock! Which is a simple Warhammer clone.

@Obermind: Aye I mulled a retroclone o' AD&D, but none of which really ticked my boxes.

Fair enough ;)

As am I. I ran my own OSR clone with Oceanshielwolf and others… with some success. It needs some tweaking but I want to run it again, this time at a tabletop.

Also played in that game for a while, and I like what you did with your OSR ruleset Helaman.

I have recently ‘discovered’ Old School Essentials (had been avoiding it for some reason, maybe because of the hype), and I must say I am very impressed with it (or maybe I am very impressed with B/X). I think some of their optional rules give a nice touch, mainly for Fighters.

Think it will work well for this crazy idea I have about running a game set in the Known World/Mystara.

I thought we were using OSE for Helaman’s game. Or was it that I was looking at OSE for QuidEst’s short lived Dolmenwood game that uses OSE as a base?

[EDIT - I remember now. Helaman made a bunch of booklets with his own rules that looked like OSE, and was based on OSE but was his own thing.]

And agree on Helaman’s game, as I said upthread, particularly liked the combat maneuver concept you used Helaman I just tried to cut and paste out of your rules document to show here, but sadly could not cut and paste text…

The Super-Simple Combat Maneuver? :)

The Super-Simple Combat Maneuver? :)

Here’s the Link to that., but I think I got it from another blog, however, more or less the same.

After a creature rolls for damage, they *can* propose a manoeuvre. The defender may choose whether to accept the manoeuvre or take the damage. Manoeuvres include disarming, pushing, stunning, blinding, breaking gear, tripping, pickpocketing, climbing, restraining, etc. The GM should veto impossible manoeuvres

I likely won't be able to post much from now until Monday morning. Busy stretch of days.

No worries Brainiac! Hope you at least get to enjoy your weekend.

Weekends are also hit and miss with me,

Yeah, same here. And for some reason, the Paizo forums are really acting up for me today, not loading and so forth.

Sorry gang, work week started with a bang... And the household is starting to show the consequences of the cold, so I am a tad busier than usual. Will have an update for us later today.

All good mate. Life first.

Hindrance: 1d100 ⇒ 100 Zealot it is. Likely a follower of Mirkeer - Goddess of Shadows and Night. Worshipers include Thieves, assassins, sorcerers, those seeking to hide for ill purposes...

Oh my…

Interesting.

Pretty much there with Mr Sly. Just need to figure out how and when he joins the party?

I'm off for some shut eye here in UK so will pick up the plan on the morrow.

We could always just, y’know, have Sly kick in the door with a knife in his hand*…just as we are leaving the tavern….or we open the door and there he is.

* from the Raymond Chandler advice to writers: “When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand”.

@GM Obermind: Was thinking of ditching the "poised to strike" Expert Feat (already have +3 DEX) and picking either

Contacts (High) - You have friends among the Nobles or Merchant Class in the better parts of towns and cities. They may help you by sharing information, giving aid, etc. but with the rich there is always a price of some kind.

OR

Contacts (Low) - You have friends in the seedier parts of towns and cities, who may help you find what you are looking for, sometimes for a price.

More campaign flavour per say, but wondered if either would fit with why he's in Grimmsgate? Might be a direct link to an NPC or setting etc?

We are the good ship money bags… for now. We are also the warship ‘Heavily Armed and Homicidal’… let’s hope the inhabitants of this hamlet don’t make it so the later also pulls into port.

@GM Obermind: Was thinking of ditching the "poised to strike" Expert Feat (already have +3 DEX) and picking either

Contacts (High) - You have friends among the Nobles or Merchant Class in the better parts of towns and cities. They may help you by sharing information, giving aid, etc. but with the rich there is always a price of some kind.

OR

Contacts (Low) - You have friends in the seedier parts of towns and cities, who may help you find what you are looking for, sometimes for a price.

More campaign flavour per say, but wondered if either would fit with why he's in Grimmsgate? Might be a direct link to an NPC or setting etc?

Have been mulling it over and yep, that works. Will get back to you with some details on this ;)

Loving the dynamic with Arwulf. Looking forward to building something similar with the rest of you, or even a wonky dynamic.

Here’s a continuation of oldskool/OSR/emulations of oldskool rulesets:

* Kobold Press are working on a 5e compatible game called Tales of the Valiant. I think. But there is also Black Flag Roleplaying - which is free - check out the “Martial Action” Fighter special abilities (or all the classes’ special abilities really), the “Doom” mechanic for GMs and other interesting bits sprinkled here and there.

* Castles and Crusades have the 7th edition of their Player’s Handbook available for free or PWYW. They have a lot of stuff going on, but ai’ve never checked any of it out.

* Then there is….Oldskull Sword and Sorcery by Kent David Kelly. This is free, but everything else this guy does is…for coin. And he loves Midjourney and AI, and his products’ discussions/reviews are a hotbed of people (and him) arguing about the relative merits of using Midjourney to generate “art” that he sells. So….I’m not touching that one with a 10’ barge pole. But others of us might not be so….delicate. And there are a lot Castle Oldskull products. Name generators, dungeon generators, anti-paladins, gonneslingers, monsters and treasures, half-ogres etc….

Loving the dynamic with Arwulf. Looking forward to building something similar with the rest of you, or even a wonky dynamic.

Easy is as easy does. Woy is a pleasure to bounce off. But I’m liking all the interactions so far. I haven’t seen more than a few dice rolls, and I’m not sure I mind in the slightest. Looking forward to slaying some chickens, or foxes. Or mold.

Here’s a continuation of oldskool/OSR/emulations of oldskool rulesets:

* Kobold Press are working on a 5e compatible game called Tales of the Valiant. I think. But there is also Black Flag Roleplaying - which is free - check out the “Martial Action” Fighter special abilities (or all the classes’ special abilities really), the “Doom” mechanic for GMs and other interesting bits sprinkled here and there.

* Castles and Crusades have the 7th edition of their Player’s Handbook available for free or PWYW. They have a lot of stuff going on, but ai’ve never checked any of it out.

* Then there is….Oldskull Sword and Sorcery by Kent David Kelly. This is free, but everything else this guy does is…for coin. And he loves Midjourney and AI, and his products’ discussions/reviews are a hotbed of people (and him) arguing about the relative merits of using Midjourney to generate “art” that he sells. So….I’m not touching that one with a 10’ barge pole. But others of us might not be so….delicate. And there are a lot Castle Oldskull products. Name generators, dungeon generators, anti-paladins, gonneslingers, monsters and treasures, half-ogres etc….

Not familiar with any of those, with the exception of Castles & Crusades - dug through it in the beginning of my search for an 'OSR system with features' earlier this year. I don't think there is anything about C&C I do not like, and I know people who swear by it. I think it has an 'issue' with not scaling saving throws (or the equivalent), which cause a lot of people to houserule on that. I asked in the Discord about it, and felt their responses were kind of dismissive, along the lines of 'hey, that's how it is'. That kinda discouraged me a bit from taking it much further.

Recently I have been delving further into Old School Essentials and Basic Fantasy RPG, and I am more and more convinced my next game will be a mix of these plus some bits and bobs from around the www. OSE is a great reference and toolbox, and I am simply blown away by the amazing amount of resources available for free from BFRPG, ranging from alternative rules for saves, classes, magic, alignment, etc, to an extended amount of supplements and adventures, enough to last you a lifetime, and quite a few of them with great reviews. Plus, they have some 'modern day' tweaks to their rules, like ascending AC and skill/attribute checks based on target numbers and not rolling below. Very much worth a deeper look in my opinion.

I have taken a second (and third and fourth) look at Shadowdark RPG, and it still feels to me it is a game designed for dungeon delving. So I have been toying with the idea of using it specifically for megadungeon delve play - it feels like it could be an almost perfect fit. Stuff like Rappan Athuk, Stonehell, Barrowmaze, along those lines. I just cannot wrap my head around the lack of Dark/Infravision for certain races like Goblins, Dwarves and such. It feels like it is a forced (and I would say unnatural by Jove!) change to make the 'darkness is horrific' schtick work. So I would like to change that, but not sure how much impact it would have on the overall system. Also the character options as they level up feels too restrictive to me with only six options, but that is something which needs a test-drive first.

Been staying in touch with the creator of Olde Swords Reign via Discord - he is a really approachable guy with a lot of good ideas, and open to change/amend/modify his game based on players and DMs feedback. I still think he is on a good path to achieve a modular, simple system midway between 5e and OSR like rules.

I don't mind playing almost any system. (With the exception of AD&D Second edition. Nothing but bad experiences with that). We've played a little Shadowdark and it's Okay... but after a bit the whole "Keep the torches lit" thing becomes more a distraction than a benefit. I don't adventure to keep up with if I can see things or not, and Dwarves not being able to see in the dark is just silly. :-)

As far as running games:

Pathfinder 2 (My new favorite)
Castles & Crusades (My favorite OSR type game).
Sci-Fi - (Still searching; with many experiments. Hope springs eternal for Starfinder 2 to be great. Whichever, I'm a Gigantic fan of the Fading Suns universe, but don't feel it's ever been graced with great gameplay mechanics).
Modern/Other - World of Darkness system. (I want to like AGE, but for some reason it seems to read better than it plays... with my group anyway.

Ahhhh...I love Fading Suns!! It is a fantastic background for a scifi game! Would love to play it someday (I have almost all the books!), but I agree the rules system is kinda sucky....

For fantasy I am working on using Olde Swords Reign with Life Path backgrounds for expanded character generation running a silver standard/HArnic economy and using the Blackmarsh as the setting!!

I do like the OSE and Basic Fantasy layouts and general approach. And yes, there is a veritable… trove… of resources. And yes, things like Dolmenwood that use OSE look beautiful and are sprinkled with nice little touches.

I agree about Shadowdark. There was even a recent thread for PF2e about light/dark/low-light vision and I was tempted to tell people about the whole “Dark” OSR movement. It…just seems like a complete conceit either way to be honest. If you had what we use to call demi-humans, then they had various ultra and infra visions, mostly fouled by the torches of the humans, who had no particular ocular/optical advancements. And so mostly it all got handwaved and ignored until it became a matter of individual, separate placement. Unless you were by yourself, you were using torchlight, or you were a party entirely of dwarves and elves and gnomes you might need a torch to examine something….like mold encrusted runes on a slab at the bottom of a….dungeon.
Building a whole mechanic out of tracking (and how you are holding) torches seems a bit…overblown. I get it…but not for me. Someone will make Encumbradungeon next where the tracking of infinitesimal pieces of junk will determine your success…

As for Fading Suns, I was always captivated by the art style, but never really got into it. Don’t even have one of the books, which is odd for me as I usually get hooked by the artwork…got plenty of games I’ve never played but have the books to leaf through for the art.

Firstly thanks for the links, they are handy.

Im looking to run table top Lamentations of the Flame Princess but like the idea of a mad doktor/alchemist laid out in Prof. Dungeon Masters Death Bringer. Do any of the OSR clones etc have a decent alchemist character class?

I’m in for the Adventurer Conquerer King 2nd ed kickstarter (in its final few days iirc). If you haven’t heard about it as a system (the controversy around it is another level I don’t want to go into) then it actually has has free SRD site up for 1st ed. A somewhat targeted google search maaay just turn up a pdf file or two.

I think it’s a pretty good remake. Not quite a clone but very close. I’ve some advance files of 2nd ed and I like where he’s gonna take it.

@Helaman - no probs, I thought the adds to classes in the Black Flag project were interesting. Something about it though gives me the same vibe as Old Swords Reign - kinda interesting, but half baked…or maybe, maybe I’m not sure these more simple games can actually have room for enough interesting spins. It sounds harsh…but your point about alchemists in OSR made me think of this.

Just how complex can a “class” get in OSR (and by complex I am not talking “complicated”. More “interesting”)? And my answer is likely “not very”. And that’s why I prefer PF1 or PF2 because the options are there, printed and created, level by level. While in the OSR realm there are a zillion different attempts by twice as many publishers to bolt on rules to a million variants of essentially the same rather simple system. The PF games are designed with the complexity in mind, and actively cater to it. It’s essentially all bolted together already.

Sure you can cobble a super awesome OSR game together, but it takes a lot of curation, and at the end of it you a) need to have a created document to hold it all together, like Helaman did in the OSR game Obermind and I played in and b) have all of your players read it and take it on. Again like any other game but that all takes a lot of effort on the part of the GM and buy in from the players.

Just a note re the actual game that I’m enjoying the openness of the various plots unfurling. We may eventually need someone to steer the ship however….as it were. And that probably shouldn’t be Ārwulf.

Or….Woyzeck. Sorry Woy.

And not Slygol, whose chief job is likely to serve Mirkeer by sowing confusion and uncomfortability while placing each and every one of us in logically derived moral quandaries where we need to either master or deny our own moral impulses to either save *one* someone or commit terrible bloody murder or multiple murders in the name of the greater numerical good. Or something.

Or we don’t need a leader at all. Worked for….some folk. Once. Perhaps.

There is this one but I do not have it personally. Not sure if it is anything good.

But to blow your mind - Dragon Magazine #2 had an Alchemist Class for D&D :O

Woooot. Thanks Obermind.

Just a note re the actual game that I’m enjoying the openness of the various plots unfurling. We may eventually need someone to steer the ship however….as it were. And that probably shouldn’t be Ārwulf.

Or….Woyzeck. Sorry Woy.

And not Slygol, whose chief job is likely to serve Mirkeer by sowing confusion and uncomfortability while placing each and every one of us in logically derived moral quandaries where we need to either master or deny our own moral impulses to either save *one* someone or commit terrible bloody murder or multiple murders in the name of the greater numerical good. Or something.

Or we don’t need a leader at all. Worked for….some folk. Once. Perhaps.

I’m definitely not the leader :)

Hey guys, I'm going to bow out of this game. I've been much busier than usual lately and haven't been able to find the brainpower to devote to this, especially with the rapid-fire pace of the back-and-forth dialogue that's been occurring. I don't want to slow things down or hold anybody back. Thanks for the opportunity to play, GM. Hopefully I'll see you all around on other games on the boards.

Hey Brainiac, no worries - though I am really sorry you are unable to join us.

In any case and if you reconsider, please make sure to come back! There have been dialogues yes, but nothing that would keep you out of the game. The door remains open ;)

My bad Brainiac - was late to the party so I've been trying to get Sly into the mix and find his "voice" - hence the chatter. Always a pleasure to be in a game with you mate.

Understood Brainiac. There’s been a lot of chatter! And no, BD, you cannot take all the blame!!!

will miss you Brainiac, but totally understand. Hope to see you on the boards!!

In case anyone is interested, I have started a new thread to create characters using a new lifepath system. If you are interested feel free to drop in..I am looking for 4-5 people to try it out.

And a handy LINK to your thread…

oops...thanks osw!!!! figures I would forget!!!

Gang, just a heads up - I will be traveling during the weekend and really busy for work next week, so updates might be slow.

In case anyone is interested, I have started a new thread to create characters using a new lifepath system. If you are interested feel free to drop in..I am looking for 4-5 people to try it out.

Consider me interested… gimme a few hours to dive in

Was interested until that ****ing cherry Dejerker showed up, so I'll politely lurk pending his inevitable soapbox turn. Lifepath stuff looks a cool mechanic.

Away for 2 days on last min business trip and family stuff. Apologies.

Out of town with family till Monday PM... so might be a little slow in responding... but I'll try to keep up.