In unserer #swordsandwizardry Runde gestern merkten zwei Spielende das Gewicht der Verantwortung. Sie haben einen Frostelfen als Sündenbock dargestellt, der Sigmar-Priester eine öffentliche Hinrichtung einleiten wollen und er merkte erst dann, dass er nicht so eindimensional und fanatistisch denken sollte. Er ist nicht die Gerichtsbarkeit und der Mob verwandelte sich durch die Geschichte des Sündenbocks zu einer blutlüsternen Menge.
I find it super weird that Raffles the Gentleman thief isn't more of a figure in the #OSR bro does burglaries purely in order to buy expensive cigarettes, nice booze, and maintain a nice address.
It's also a series of short stories so overtly queer that when the legendary Catholic spy fiction author Graham Greene wrote a fanfic play about the main characters and made them a couple.
Been thinking about rivers on maps in fantasy games. (hat tip to @kensanata ) Most fantasy maps show just a couple of rivers. But water is everywhere in the real world. This colorful map of England's rivers gives a hint. So making rivers on a fantasy map becomes a question of how much fidelity you want to portray.
Ich hab in einer „Light-Version“ drei Räume vorbereitet und mir die Details on-the-fly wo rausgezogen – und es hat aus meiner Sicht gut geklappt. Normalerweise würfelt man alles adhoc aus, aber fürs erste Mal war mir das zu viel.
Es war hoffentlich kosmisch schräg und unterhaltsam.
A while ago I started playing with some people on an online server. That was about the time when I decided that I should maybe be playing more often than just GMing. Unfortunately life intervenes a lot, and lately there haven’t been that many games in the main campaign to keep me busy. I am also co-DMing a Shadowrun game lately, so there’s that, but I am missing the OSR fantasy fare. So I decided to run a game on the server, specifically with MapTool, which I have been hovering around for a while, but never actually used. In fact I never used a proper VTT to play, so this would be a first.
I decided to use Tomb of the Serpent Kings for it because it’s nicely done and available for free, and I already had it played before, and Labyrinth Lord as a game system because that has been my basic system for a while (yeah, I never updated to OSE even though I use some of the material for it).
Game Report
The group consisted of 2 elves (Damion and Eltariel) and a MU (Frondo) with his torchbearer/muscle (Big Boris). They originally were rustled up by the local bailiff to apprehend the bandit Wild Man Roberts and his two not-so-merry-men, who were seen digging somewhere at a hillside a short way off.
The bandits were easily located inside a hole they opened in the hillside. This turned out to be a hallway going into the dark, with the bandits lying dead just a short way in. Having determined they were done in by a simple poison trap in the ceiling they decided to investigate a bit further (and do some not-graverobbing) when they encountered sarcophagi with clay statues of snake-men inside. Inside the statues were small amounts of treasure and snake skeletons (turning it to actual graverobbing). Also poison gas.
A large door at the end of the hallway was trapped by a mechanism, which they devised to disable with various methods, giving them access to a larger room with three wooden coffins. Soon enough those turned out to have skeletons of snake-like beings inside that started attacking the newly minted graverobbers. Unfortunately a series of good attacks cost the life of two of the party (both elves), and the unlife of two snakes, while Frondo and his torchbearer took off almost immediately.
Out of sight of the skeleton the two decided to rearm the trap outside and trigger it after baiting the last skeleton into it’s area. The giant stone hammer coming out of the ceiling took care of the last opponent.
Frondo returned to give his companions a proper burial (and loot their bodies), then turned back to civilization to collect the bounty on the bandits.
Notes regarding MapTool
MapTool worked great until it didn’t. At the end we had some issues when two of us got disconnected while the others still could see things move around. I think I should have restarted the server in that case, but as it was in the very end of the 2-hour time slot we just played out the rest without it.
MapTool now has a function (marked as experimental) that allows to create a server and connect to it directly from other clients. No more futzing around with port forwarding in this case. Unfortunately maybe not as stable as it could be (see above). Still, the lack of such a function was one of the reasons I did not use the software before, as it would have been too much work to get it running with my network setup. Now that problem is gone, it literally has become a matter of creating a server, having players connect (they are prompted for a PIN), and their computers downloading the media files from my computer.
Speaking of media files, MapTool allows to use media files from the players computers to use in the game. Those are also added to the campaign file automatically. In fact it even allows to run a remote server where the campaign file is stored, I just haven’t been able to try that one yet. But other than that? Want to have a new token? Drop a picture in the related TokenTool, make a suitable token, then just add it in a folder and use it as you will. Nice.
I do find the use of MapTool surprisingly convenient. There are a few things that one can’t do in the tool (e.g. animated maps would be nice, but can’t be done in the current architecture), and some stuff that can be done but needs to be configured properly (no one has bothered to create a script framework for OSR games yet it seems), but I have a lot of options to show the players exactly what I want them to see. Still there are a few things that I still have to figure out.
The dynamic lighting in the dungeon is of course the star of the show. One can add a vision blocking layer and have PCs walk through the dungeon and have them see whatever it is that they have a) lit and b) what they can see. This can make for some interesting tactical gaming where some monster or character can see some things, but cannot see others. I noticed that it also takes a lot of mental strain from me as a DM as I don’t need to track either light or walking order in this case.
The other thing that helps a lot is the way one can organize a scenario here. Players can generally see 3 layers on the screen: tokens, objects, and background, and they can interact only with the first one. Another hidden layer is present, but is only available to DMs. This is useful, as it allows you to drop information (e.g. attached to a numbered token) at the appropriate places, and just call it up by going over it on the token layer. As it’s hidden it is not actually visible for players, and you can have your whole adventure in there, slowly following along as the PCs explore. Incredibly useful.
That said, there was an annoying issue with players moving tokens over specific (invisible to them) GM tokens with information, and me not being able to access them then. I think this might have a button that allows DMs to get a hold of tokens under others. but if it has I haven’t found it yet.
Not every part of the lighting system is perfect though. I still can’t make head nor tails out of elevations and depressions. I don’t quite know what to think about them. They don’t update in ways that I would expect from either. I would for example depressions with a light source inside expect to be lit inside, but they aren’t. The lighting system also takes a little to register someone has updated settings. More than once we got stuck in a place with a newly lit lantern not lighting anything because we didn’t move.
Doors are one of the things I will have to get into more. It is possible to create movable doors, but how is still a bit of a mystery to me.
Notes regarding Labyrinth Lord
we were playing by the book, but that might have been a mistake. The game might need to become a bit less deadly, so next time we should use the splintering shield rules, a death and dismemberment chart, and some rule about helmets I should first figure out (stock LL doesn’t seem to have a bonus for helmets
one house rule I already used for XP is XP for exploration: every new room discovered/mapped gives 50xp
I do wonder if I should have used Labyrinth Lord or maybe have gone even more minimal with White Box Fantasy.
Notes regarding Tomb of the Serpent Kings
I already played this one with another online group at the beginning of the pandemic. Unfortunately that didn’t last long, and we never managed to get to some of the more interesting parts of the dungeon.
I've never done an #introduction post on here and I don't have a pinned post, so here goes:
I'm Nick. Pronouns he/him. I live in Toronto and I work in tech as a... technical artist, kinda?
I love to run #ttrpgs and I'm leaning more towards rules-light #osr#nsr stuff. I play far less often than I'd like.
I also talk about parenting, video games, and sometimes (rarely) post my art.
Heute durfte ich mal wieder eine Runde #OSE am analogen Open Table leiten. Alle paar Montage bringe ich bei mir zuhause eine #osr Runde an den Start. Das Miniprojekt Open Table läuft ganz gut an und ich bin gespannt, wie sich das weiter entwickelt. Heute haben wir #HideousDaylight von Brad Kerr gespielt. Auch voll schön, über das Hobby so viele neue Leute kennenzulernen und nicht diesen Scheduling-Stress an den Hacken zu haben. #RedBoxRheinMain#pnpde
If anyone is interested in playing d&d tonight, I have a spot open.
0:15am UTC (Universal Time)
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8:15pm EDT (New York)
5:15pm (Seattle)
There use to be this thing called the FLAILSNAILS convention. Basically just some verbiage to say, bring any D&D character from any vaguely D&D system to the table and you can play.
So, any level 1 to level 3 character you want to bring. Holmes Basic, AD&D, 4th edition, 5th edition, whatever you want to bring. DM me if interested.
In short, I write and design TTRPGs and adventures as a worker-owner of Archstone Press, and I’m particularly interested in some of these things: #NSR#OSR#RuneQuest#PbtA#Pathfinder#BronzeAge fantasy, #Cairn (and the games that came out of it), and #worldbuilding in general!
Wenn ihr noch für eure #OSR Runde einen Schauplatz für 1-2 Sessions sucht mit einer potentiell zukünftigen Nemesis für eure Kampagne, dann schaut euch gerne #DunkleErnte an.
Dies ist nicht euer üblicher wandernder Zirkus und birgt einige Eigenheiten und Gefahren. Geschrieben für #SwordsAndWizardry aber auch passend für andere Systeme oder als Fundgrube.
So, the more I read Swords & Wizardry (Complete, Revised, nifty Erol Otis cover), the more I like it above other options. Why is it not more popular, I wonder?
Hey #trrpg folks, has anyone of you played #17thCenturyMinimalist , an #osr game for „historical low-fantasy“ settings? I‘m always on the lookout for an osr rules set that aligns well with early modern (inspired) settings. I‘m just reading through the 17thCM rules and like what I see. I wonder how the luck mechanics turn out in the game. They are clearly intended to counter the „lethality“ of the game (hp do not increase), but I’m not a big fan of meta-currency, re-roll mechanics. Any thoughts?
I have a strong suspicion that the emphasis on light management is much more an #OSR creation than something truly old-school. A 3rd level Magic-user has access to Continual Light, which would give an entire party access to their own personal infinite sources of light with a week of downtime. RAW, light simply isn't a scarce resource.
#Introduction: Hello, I am #new here! I was on #Diaspora for quite a few years but it was a very small community. Mastodon seems larger and more dynamic.
I'm mainly here to chat about #RPG games. I have been playing #DnD since the #1980s, starting with Moldvay #Basic and Keep on the Borderlands. These days I am mostly playing #DCC, but also enjoy Call of #Cthulhu, Traveller and #OSR games.
Besides #RPGs, I like British comics, especially #2000AD and its spin-offs. And #cycling.
Dunkle Ernte - ein OSR-Schauplatz um einen wandernden Zirkus - ist weiterhin in der Vorbestellung zu einem speziellen Preis verfügbar.
Er ist für die Stufe 1-3 ausgelegt und hat Werte für Swords & Wizardry. Also einfache Konvertierung möglich!
Der Schauplatz kommt zusätzlich mit zufälligen Szenen, Momenten zur atmosphärischen Beschreibung und Monsterpräfixen um etwas Abwechslung in die Monster zu bringen.
Neu im Blog: „A Dungeon Game – Zweiter Eindruck zum Fantasy-OSR-Rollenspiel von Chris Bissette“
Dies ist ein Folgebeitrag zu „A Dungeon Game – Erster Eindruck zum Fantasy-OSR-Rollenspiel von Chris Bissette“. Ich arbeite das Regelwerk durch und sammle in mehreren Artikeln meine selektiven Eindrücke. #pnpde#Rollenspiel#OSR#Fantasy