The Doom of Blackwinter has befallen the town of Ethan's Vale, and now threatens to overwhelm the whole of the mortal realms! Only a few brave souls can stop the awakening of Winter's Heart!
The Doom of Blackwinter is now available for Old School Essentials and Zweihander.
This online player reference for #WolvesUpontheCoast by Luke Gearing condenses just the rules most relevant to players.
Rules have been rewritten for easy reading, and can be browsed a mobile-friendly website. A PDF booklet and full-page size form fillable PDF character sheet for the system are also available. #OSR
It's interesting how the dominant #OSR title seems to change every so often.
A few years back, the default starter game was Lamentations of the Flame Princess, then it shifted to Old School Essentials, and now I get the impression that it's shifting to Dungeon Crawl Classics.
Not really sure why this happens... Lamentations had the Zak S thing but OSE haven't messed up and I don't get the impression that DCC has suddenly started doing noticeably better work.
It‘s Birthdaychristmas - managed to buy five complete TSR era #adnd boxed sets (#Ravenloft and #Darksun) plus a pile of fragmented setting material on eBay for 170 EUR which is a good price since some of the English language 2nd ed material is hard to come by in Germany. Boxes were sent to my partner‘s flat since I’m in Italy right now. Best thing: my gf recorded a long unboxing video for me, so that curious me could check how complete the treasure was I found on the internet 😍 #osr#ttrpg
#dnd#ttrpg#osr folks: I'm looking for a good supply of maps that would work for a long-forgotten city in a steaming jungle. I really just want the maps - I can make a normal dungeon map myself, but I'm less confident in above-ground ruined cities.
Any suggestions? I'm looking at Ruins of Adventure and Dwellers of the Forbidden City (gonna grab the pdfs online) but if you can think of anything that fits the bill please let me know!
OSR funktioniert nämlich im Grunde so wie Scooby Doo. Falls jemand so jung sein sollte, dass er oder sie nicht weiß, was Scooby Doo ist, dann hier in aller Kürze eine Erklärung. Die Freunde Velma, Freddy, Shaggy und Daphne bilden zusammen die Gruppe Mystery Inc. Dabei werden sie von ihrem sprechenden Freund Scooby begleitet, der insbesondere zu Shaggy ein enges Verhältnis pflegt. Gemeinsam lösen sie geheimnisvolle Fälle, bei denen es fast immer um Monster geht, die sich dann doch als verkleidete Menschen herausstellen.
Was hat das jetzt mit OSR zu tun?
Das Entscheidene ist weniger, was die Mitglieder von Mystery Inc. tun, als wie sie es tun. Gerüchten folgend gelangen sie immer wieder an Orte, an denen es angeblich spukt oder ein Monster sein Unwesen treibt. Und obwohl die Gruppe ungefähr 200 Mal am Ende der Folge festgestellt hat, dass das Monster in Wirklichkeit der alte Clifford Jones war, der Mieter vertreiben will, um das Land günstig zu erwerben, geht Mystery Inc. doch immer wieder davon aus, dass es sich DIESES MAL doch um ein echtes Monster handelt.
Das ist sehr intelligent und definitiv besser, als das eine Mal, wo es wirklich ein Monster gibt, nicht zu glauben, dass es eines gibt. Und obwohl die Gruppe immer wieder davon ausgeht, dass es DIESES MAL ein echtes Monster gibt, ist sie weder von Fähigkeiten noch von der Ausrüstung irgendwie in der Lage, es zu bekämpfen. Stattdessen gibt es die für Scooby Doo ikonische Weglaufszene, in der die Gruppe die Gegebenheiten der Umgebung nutzt, um dem Monster zu entkommen, es abzulenken und letztendlich zu besiegen. Insbesondere Shaggy und Scooby werden dabei oft extrem kreativ und nutzen Verkleidungen, die sie am Ort des Abenteuers finden.
Das ist im Großen und Ganzen genau das, was von den Spielenden bei OSR erwartet wird. Natürlich ist es bei Scooby Doo oft sehr klamaukig aber auch das finde ich persönlich in Ordnung, wenn es denn im Kontext der Aufgabe Sinn ergibt.
Also überlegt mal, statt Philotomys Betrachtungen und die OSR-Fibel zu lesen, einfach ein paar Folgen Scooby Doo zu gucken. Am besten zusammen mit dem Rest der Spielgruppe.
I've had my account bridged to BS for almost two weeks and I finally got a follower over there. Hey Magic Sky Publishing! Thanks for the follow, but you have to bridge your account to Mastodon or join us over at dice.camp (plenty of left wing #OSR fans over here btw) for us to actually interact.
Gleich geht es los mit #Shadowdark. Ich leite einen kleinen #Hexcrawl in einem Sumpf. Mit Echsen- UND Froschmenschen! Mal sehen, wie es läuft. #pnpde#osr
Ganz prinzipiell: warum sollte mensch ein System aus diesem Jahrtausend spielen, welches das Spielgefühl der 1970er Jahre vermittelt, anstatt ein System aus den 1970er Jahren?
Ich mag bspw. #DCC und #Shadowdark sehr gerne, aber das ist eine der Fragen die ich mir durch meine Beschäftigung mit #ODnD aka #0e und #SwordsAndWizardry schon stelle.
Issue 3 of Wanderer Bill’shttps://lkh.sdf-eu.org/wandererbill/grenzland/ just landed in my mailbox yesterday, with, among other things, an NPC class written by me (“The Anointed of Abyssal Slaughter”). It mostly was me combining the given topic of the issue with an interest in NPC classes a while ago.
The ‘zine also contains a one-page dungeon by Alex Schroeder (“The Crown of Neptune”), a game report (“Schiffbruch”), rules for sailing ships (“Salt’n’Tar”), and another scenario (“Eingekerkert”), the latter three all by Wanderer Bill. The ‘zine is a mix of German and English, and you can get it for the phenomenal price of free at the website.
(he does have a few more physical copies for 7 Euros left over though)
The original game Fantasy Wargaming: The Highest Level of All (or just Fantasy Wargaming in some editions) was a 1981 book by Bruce Galloway, a clear variation on Dungeons and Dragons, based on Galloway’s home rules. Unlike it’s competition it was not afraid of using actual historical concepts like astrology and occultism in it’s descriptions, although it also was written so densely it was hard to make sense of it in any shape or form by someone not already familiar with roleplaying games. And, well, it was called Fantasy Wargaming.
Which made this a problem, as the game was published both in the UK and the US by mainstream publishers obviously trying to break into the nascent TTRPG market. The most available version was most likely the one published by the Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club, which made the game available to many people who did not have any experience with roleplaying games before.
Unfortunately one has to say, as the game’s size (300pgs) and conceptual denseness made parsing the book quite a feat, meaning if people used this as an introduction to roleplaying, it might not have been very successful.
The Story of Fantasy Wargaming goes into this, and into the development of the game. It could have been a bit more thorough and a bit more critical, but for what it is it’s a nice look into the environment that created it. And well, it’s free.
(I learned about this book from an episode of the Vintage RPG Podcast which had the author on and talked about this project. Well worth a listen)
https://gmkeros.files.wordpress.com/2024/05/warlocks_and_witches_in_a_dance5238827366399506857.jpg?w=1024John Faed, Warlocks and Witches in a dance (1855)I am not a fan of Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition. In fact I am not a fan of the 4th edition either, or the 3.5th edition, or Pathfinder (the 3.75th edition) for that matter. Actually I burned out running 3e and that was the impetus to go back to older edition, retroclones, and the OSR.
Which means I only really was touched by the introduction of warlock peripherally.
It didn’t help that I first saw them done in 3.5 and was not impressed. I still am not. It took them a while to get them into a state where players might intuitively grasp what the class is about. The 5th edition one seems to have managed that though, and I think I get why: warlocks are fun.
They are the kind of power fantasy that has all the hallmarks of a chugging half a quart of vodka with Red Bull and stealing a car. Maybe in the back of your mind you know that this is a bad idea, but right now you are intoxicated and it’s fun and who knows if morning will ever come and who cares about those flashing blue lights behind you?
Warlocks are the bad example your parents warned you about. It’s what lazy kids become when they grow up. But why, do the fighter and the magic user say, do they have so much fun being lazy? What about training? What about studying?
To which the Warlocks answer: “Eldritch Blast!”
But no, I think Warlocks as a character concept are really wonderfully OSR: you sell your soul to… not necessarily the devil, but SOMETHING, and then you can do all kinds of stuff you never learned. That sounds overpowered, and it is. But there is the implicit end of the warlock, which most people seem to forget because they treat it as just another class: this is a class that is completely dependent on some other unknownable being and their whims. There is not really a good ending for the warlock. Whatever actually happens with them when they die, in most cases it shouldn’t be pretty. If you have pledged your soul to the devil you won’t end slurping ice cold drinks at the shore of some scenic lake of fire. If you pledged it to an archfey you might end up as furniture.
I think what is missing from the class as written a bit is that there should be marks of what you are doing on you as well. You don’t become level 5 with no outside mark. I would say that every level there should be a possibility of a new pact marker. Cloven feet? Horns growing? Ears start looking like leafs? Something like that.
Reaction rolls should be affected. People might fear you, but they won’t respect you. You took the easy way and when people know they KNOW. Animals will look at you funny. You might not be able to pass under a horseshoe anymore. Mirrors shatter. That stuff.
Also ages ago I wrote about how to do multiclassing in my opinion. Every level, even the first, should cost as much as the next highest level of your other classes. That still holds up, but I think Warlocks… don’t follow that rule. Because learning another class when you spent your life doing something else shouldn’t be easy. Unless, well, you sell your soul or something. New warlocks just become warlocks.
Morgen leite ich #TheGardensOfYnn (von Emmy Allen) an unserem #osr online Open Table. Wenn jemand mal reinschnuppern mag, gerne melden. Aktuell ist noch ein Platz frei. Wir spielen ab 20:00 Uhr
System: #Shadowdark (old school dnd hack, also known as dnd6e der Herzen)
Bei den Gardens of Ynn geht es um die Erkundung einer extradimensionalen Parkanlage. Die Stimmung des Settings changiert zwischen weird-verspielt und unheimlich.
CN: etwas Body Horror #Valravn
The Bluesky #OSR feed is fascinating as it shows how many people seem to have passionate views on the OSR based upon someone else's Twitter rant and a butt load of weird projection.
At the moment, two lads who acknowledge that Traveller is not an OSR game, are basically harassing some dude for validation because he went low-key viral with a well-phrased observation about the OSR.
Das Modul Lig Bro jetzt ohne künstliche Intelligenz. Nur noch mit meiner. Oha.
Lig-Bro ist ein OSR-Remake des DSA-Klassikers „Das Grabmal von Brig-Lo“ von Hadmar von Wieser. Konkret geschrieben für Swords & Wizardry. Analag zum Modul „Das Nebelmoor“ hat das Abenteuer außer dem Namen und der grundsätzlichen Inspiration nicht viel mit dem Vorbild gemeinsam. Lig-Bro ist größer und gemeiner als das Nebelmoor und enthält ein paar Insider-Witze, die vielleicht nicht an jedem Tisch zünden. Ich selbst finde mich saukomisch und das ist ja das Wichtigste.