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Threadly reminder: Don't eat bait, don't feed trolls.

>gay hijacked OP he's been forcing since October

>TQ
For me, it's the Rakshasa. No doubt it's partially due to Trampier's great illustration, but I also like that it's a mid-level "villain"/boss monster that doesn't really have great attacks, just superlative defenses and illusion abilities.

Noob questions: why were there Advanced D&D and Basic D&D? Also is BECMI expanded B/X, but still more basic than Advanced? And what was the point of there being three systems out at the same time?

>>97629038
First there was D&D, which is now called OD&D as in Original. It's a great game still, but messy as fuck and hard to understand, which quickly became a problem once the game spread outside of the original Lake Geneva/Twin Cities groups who could teach it by direct application and make sense of it that way. A guy named J. Eric Holmes suggested to Gygax that they could make an introductory box set and that became Holmes Basic. At the same time Gygax was cleaning up the various supplements to D&D and clarifying the rules (with, let's say, variable success; AD&D initiative as written makes little sense at times), and that version of D&D was published in three hardbacks as AD&D. A few years later the Holmes Basic box set was beginning to be considered a bit unapproachable/out of date itself, and Tom Moldvay wrote a new Basic box set, with Zeb Cook and Steve Marsh writing a follow-on Expert box set to expand the level range. This really cemented the concept of Basic D&D as a separate line (targeted more at kids and toy shops), but in fact, this edition, B/X, was only in print for about a year before it was replaced by a total rework of the line by Frank Mentzer (this being BECMI). B/X had promised a further Companion box set that was obviously never released due to the short life of B/X; this third box set did come out in the form of the C set of BECMI, of course. (You could also argue that the promised box set WAS released, as Mentzer's Companion, what with the short publication window of B/X.) Mentzer's Basic was even more kid-oriented and contained extensive teaching elements such as a brief solo play scenario as well as Larry Elmore b/w art, and probably sold better than any other D&D product ever released. It was a huge hit that drove the D&D fad, but is less well seen in the OSR for a bunch of reasons.

TL;DR the BE of BECMI is almost identical to B/X, and the point of two simultaneous systems was to catch the wargame and kid audiences.

>>97629038
>why were there Advanced D&D and Basic D&D?
Basic was made and marketed as an introduction for kids. People will tell you it's because of royalty issues between Gygax and Arneson, which was certainly a plus from Gary's POV, but not the only or even the main reason.

>Also is BECMI expanded B/X, but still more basic than Advanced?
The first two books, BE, are a slightly modified B/X, sometimes improving it, but sometimes for the worse. We generally DON'T recommend it over B/X for beginners, because B/X is explained much better, while Mentzer added the Sad Story of the Dead Waifu and a gamebook-like introduction, which are both misleading.

The second two books, CM, is an increasingly poorly expanded to higher levels. It gets many things wrong, chiefly it breaks the Thief for absolutely no reason, and Weapon Mastery is just bad.

The Immortals set is completely unplayested crap that doesn't make any sense and is not even D&D.

All in all, BECMI is still basic, usually a worse version of it. It's not at all a substitute for AD&D in any way, shape, or form.

There's more info about this and on how to get started in the n00b Guides in the OP.

>>97629038
>but still more basic than Advanced?
This is kinda debatable looking at certain aspects of C and M

>>97629149
>>97629198
Thanks for replies. No wonder D&D Next is intentionally designed to be so complicated kids who learn the system don't want to invest in learning other game system ever again.
Isn't it like OD&D had rules and all but didn't tell you the basics like example of play? Like you had to have somebody from Midwest who saw how the game is actually played? There's a giant chunk of context missing for me because I'm Eastern Yuro and we learned about D&D from 90s video games and essentially see tabletops as video games but with more freedom.
Also why have kids as target audience? I've never heard of a kid under 16 even considering playing. You need some context and experience with fantasy novels, comics, music and some survival training to appreciate the game. It's hard for me to imagine 11 year old Americans reading some game manuals, designing dungeons and realms.
I guess the States were 20 years ahead of us at all times. My dad was in his 20s in the 70s and all they had were chess, pinball, bowling and drinking. No arcades or consoles, you were fortunate if you had a color tv. I imagine anyone with nerdy interests would get bullied with no mercy. Sci-fi was accepted, but fantasy wasn't a thing before the 90s. Same as vidya or video rentals.

>>97629198
>and Weapon Mastery is just bad.
Probably among the most fun I ever had with a martial in D&D, ever.
The Thief was absolutely massacred, true.

>the last 3 random encounters have been with giant bugs ambushing us.
I know it is actually random but you will forgive me if my character comes to the conclusion that some sort of evil wizard or druid is responsible for attacking travelers and has some elaborate ruse to blame orcs and goblins.

>>97629225
>I've never heard of a kid under 16 even considering playing.
I started playing D&D when I was 9. The pre-internet, pre-smartphones, pre-gaming-consoles world was a VERY different place.

>Sci-fi was accepted, but fantasy wasn't a thing before the 90s.
This is very false. Tolkien was HUGE

>>97629337
Tolkein got huge in Anglosphere during the 60s, but it took 20 more years for hin to penetrate this market. Also I am too young to remember the time before internet. People got phone lines and internet in the early-mid 90s so they basically appeared at the same time. There were payphones, and private lines in commie blocks, but getting lines installed to your house was expensive. People went from having b&w tvs and no phones to cell phones, dishes, color tv and internet in the span of 5-6 years.

>>97629225
>Sci-fi was accepted, but fantasy wasn't a thing before the 90s
Nonsense, do younger people not know about the great nerd wheel anymore? Sure, it's broken and doesn't seem to spin anymore now, but for most of the 20th century, the most popular genre fiction among nerds rotated between science fiction and fantasy every 10 years or so, starting around the 30s in the pulp era.

>>97629428
As I've said this is Yuropistan I'm talking about. There was no pulp fiction here. Maybe some cowboy and romance novels on the kiosk and that's about it. Lots of Italian and Franco-Belgian comics. Very little Marvel or DC. Just Daredevil, Superman, Spider-Man and Batman I think. It was very backwards. My great grandma was illiterate in the 20th century, she died in late 1970s. Movies didn't even kick off before the 60s or so. There were just jazz, schlagers, maybe some rock and roll but only in the 70s. People didn't know how to have fun before the 90s. People were too poor to waste little money they've had on print before the 60s. Very little has changed between let's say 1700s and 1950s other than half the men getting killed in wars every 20 years.

>>97629477
>As I've said this is Yuropistan I'm talking about.
Ah, I missed that. Yeah, the great wheel was only really a thing in the English-speaking world. And France, I think.

>>97629578
It's okay. It's interesting how Cold War made the nerd markets differ depending on your bloc. The East had no gaming scene except for Cyberpunk in Poland and Magus in Hungary I believe. It just takes a lot of exposure to sci fi and fantasy to make a tabletop gamer. Even now there's just one hobby shop in my cunt. Maybe two, idk. I don't see gaming getting more popular with zoomers, let alone alphies. What you call millennials is the only age bracket that was old enough to read and young enough to use internet. Gen x and boomers weren't interested in imaginary things. Gen z and a are very crude and are devolving into becoming oriental.

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thraciafag from like a month ago, next session's today! i ended up reading some more ad&d and ose to come up with pricing on that palisade in the woods my players wanted to make with the money they retrieved from the lizardman lair on the overworld hex map. frankly i didn't know palisades were built on thick dirt encampments till reading it in the ad&d dm's guide lol.

i figured this would be a safe place for them to end sessions without having to trudge the several miles back to town but had a thought, do you guys have things like encounters off screen for crashing into a player owned base like that? i don't especially care to just bully them for making a little war camp a couple miles away from the caverns, but leaving them un-harassed also seems too easy even for the amount of gold they'll put into making the thing. i also keep thinking of logistical things like food or retaining their wealth but that would be pretty easy to just handwave as a certain amount of gold being taxed out of their coffers every week. do you guys just say "oh if you have a squad of six mercs patrolling the hex then it's fine it's protected" or do you have a procedure you like to do between sessions to decide what happens?

>>97629637
>do you guys have things like encounters off screen for crashing into a player owned base like that? i don't especially care to just bully them for making a little war camp a couple miles away from the caverns, but leaving them un-harassed also seems too easy even for the amount of gold they'll put into making the thing.
Yes, harassing the encampment should be a thing. How? That's very dependent on the campaign and players. I like to have that kind of thing during downtime between sessions. Ideally the hirelings have orders and are able to defend a palisade, so at the very minimum you should be able to tell them "X attacked, there were Y casualties and Z gp in repairs are needed". If the players are available to chat between sessions and PCs are inside the palisade, you could tell them "X is attacking, what are your orders?", and then tell them how the encounter went based on their orders. Yet another option is to tell them what attacks, let them solo it out without you, and tell them what happened. Or get a friend who's not in the campaign to run the attack for you. Or get that friend to tell you what the monsters' tactics are going to be for that fight. The possibilities are endless, really.

>>97629990
>Yet another option is to tell them what attacks, let them solo it out without you, and LET THEM TELL YOU what happened.
t. phonefag

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>>97629990
yeah alright fair. i guess you just roll for encounters every (real) day or whenever you feel like? i like the idea of reporting what happened since i've been kinda doing that in regards to the factions in the swamp they're currently mucking in. i'd imagine that their takeover of a lizardman treasure trove would instigate and provoke responses, so having them getting their doors constantly battered at while they also try to loot the caverns seems appropriate.

>>97630075
>i guess you just roll for encounters every (real) day or whenever you feel like?
Yep. Just roll as often as you do for a party of PCs who are resting in the wilderness. You'll have to ignore a bunch of results, though: A bear can't really do much against a manned palisade, and most humanoids are smart enough to know whether they have the numbers to attempt something like that. NPC parties and dragons are where it gets tricky, but that's what reaction rolls are for.

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>>97630358
>NPC parties and dragons
yeah that's my main concern since i have a black dragon hanging out in the swamp (though, an npc party interaction is cool i'll have to throw one of those on the table) and i don't know how that interaction would go other than either a. ignoring them or b. just steamrolling their puny little camp.

>>97630075
>>97630358
You also want to determine what lairs are in the hex and possibly nearby hexes as well, and determine how they react when they see that a new palisade has been erected. Attack? Demand tribute? Offer an alliance? Send diplomats? Might make for some interesting faction play. Not everything has to be a battle.

>>97630379
>i have a black dragon hanging out in the swamp (though, an npc party interaction is cool i'll have to throw one of those on the table) and i don't know how that interaction would go other than either a. ignoring them or b. just steamrolling their puny little camp.
Like I said in the comment above, the dragon might demand tribute. In gold or livestock to eat or whatever. You don't even have to decide: Call up a friend who's not in the campaign, tell him what the dragon knows, and ask him what he'd do if he were the dragon. As a DM, we often feel that we have to pull our punches because we know too much, but a third party often comes up with great shit.

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>>97630393
that hex was a "lair" in that it was an old windmill lizardmen used to drop treasure off in between raids (basically just rolled for treasure and halved everything since it wasn't a "true" lair). since it's so close to the caverns, they wanted to secure the windmill, erect palisades, and effectively take that minor tactical fortification for themselves to use as their own treasure drop off/safe place to camp without taking a day or two of hiking to get back to town. nearby is mostly featureless swampland but i could probably drop stuff around. the windmill landmark was just sort of an off the cuff cool thing on the map for them to use for direction, i wasn't expecting them to actually try to investigate it.
>>97630410
tribute thing sounds pretty dope but i almost wonder if they would ever have enough money to pay off the guy lol. you guys were right that the caverns could be pretty sparse on treasure, but it's also like it already has good spots for treasure at the same time. multiplying what they can find by like five or ten times so the delve isn't a total poverty crawl has worked but i keep wondering if it's too much.

though that said, there's six of them and the lair giving them as much as it did made them all breathe a sigh of relief and exclaim how happy they were for "finally" getting a win, so maybe i need to be even more generous lol.

>>97629198
Much better explanation of the crucial differences than mine, Anon, well done.

I will defend Weapon Mastery a bit because it's clear that by that time they'd realized the Basic Fighter was nerfed too hard, something was needed to bring him back to competence. Doesn't explain why they just kept fucking the Thief, admittedly. (Especially considering that B/X already promised the Thief would get all new skills in the Companion box; one of few things explicitly advertised, and then they just... didn't bother.)

>>97629225
>Isn't it like OD&D had rules and all but didn't tell you the basics like example of play? Like you had to have somebody from Midwest who saw how the game is actually played?
Pretty much. Supposedly TSR got tons of mail about it. This was the core reason for releasing Holmes Basic. There's a preserved letter from early TSR illustrator Dave Sutherland to someone named "Marg" explaining how the game works slash apologizing for how baffling it is.

>Sci-fi was accepted, but fantasy wasn't a thing before the 90s.
This might be an Eastern Euro-specific thing; I don't have any personal experience, but I've heard before that sci-fi was more accepted/normalized behind the iron curtain.

>>97630483
>that hex was a "lair"
A hex isn't a lair. A lair isn't a hex. There can be more than one lair in a hex. Look up the DMG section on clearing the wilderness.


>>97630668
>Especially considering that B/X already promised the Thief would get all new skills in the Companion box; one of few things explicitly advertised, and then they just... didn't bother.
We're talking about Frank "I don't need to playtest shit because I'm a genius" Mentzer here.

>>97629637
If you want to get extremely granular with it there are rules in AD&D for exactly how many patrols of what size you need to have to consider a hex cleared, but personally I wouldn't require stuff like that of a bunch of level 1 PCs guarding their palissade fort.

I would suggest that you play it by ear. My sense is that they ought to be safe *most* of the time so they feel like the palissade was a reasonable investment etc, but maybe they'd get assaulted by the lizardmen after some particularly successful coup in the dungeons, and so on. I think that daily or weekly rolls ofr attackers are likely to make the fort into a poison chalice and feel punitive, like you're fucking the players for taking initiatives. It's too harsh IMO.

>>97630668
>I will defend Weapon Mastery a bit because it's clear that by that time they'd realized the Basic Fighter was nerfed too hard, something was needed to bring him back to competence
I will counter that by saying that having to specialize in one weapon is also a kind of nerf, since now if you encounter a magic weapon of a different type, you can't use it without a big penalty relative to your preferred weapon.
Weapon Mastery takes away the Fighter's versatility and makes it even more a game of "longswords only," and that's lame.

>>97629038
In addition to what others has said, for various reasons there was also that perception in the 80s that more complex / advanced systems were cooler and better.

>>97631011
Yes, I agree that anything that locks the Fighter in to a few weapons is bad – including AD&D weapon proficiencies. But I don't want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and I think in that era that type of solution was more or less inevitable in practice – it was seen as good design to increase differentiation between Fighters, instead of as you said, just fucking anyone who didn't pick longsword.

>>97629149
>You could also argue that the promised box set WAS released, as Mentzer's Companion
I think that would be a poor argument to attempt. You'll remember from Cook and Marsh the promise of new and exciting thief skills. These didn't come. They were two guys speculating about ideas for book three, a book they might even had been assigned to even if it did get written, while working on book two. We got a Companion set but we didn't get the Companion set we were promised.

>BE of BECMI is almost identical to B/X
Especially in the early printings. A lot of the changes, especially slowed down thief progression, arose only when those two sets were aligned with the later release of the Companion set.

>>97631368
>You'll remember
I look down the thread and see you did remember >>97630668

>>97629610
>Even now there's just one hobby shop in my cunt.
Not enough interest from regular customers so you decided to diversify into the hobby market?

>>97629610
>Maybe two, idk.
There may be two but you don't know. How big is that thing?

>>97631467
>>97631478
There's little demand. They sell dice, figurines, paint, tons of board games,, a few RPG handbooks. All in English. I imagine most people just pirate books and order dice sets from Aliexpress. Board games are far more popular than RPGs. I like Risk and Catan.

>>97629279
This is the kind of stuff a good dm will take and run with.
>repeat encounters with giant bugs
>add giant bug wizard or lair to map

>>97629477
My Italian mom had translated Conan, Shannara, Tolkien and so on in the 70s and 80s
Where are you from?

>>97631537
I suppose if there's little demand then two is all you need, though I am surprised that you don't know how many there are. If I had two there I'm very sure I'd know about it. Even one I'd know about with all the traffic in and out of the place I'd expect happens.

Where I live there are usually a couple in everything but the smallest places. Some cater more for the hardware people who need special things to play games I've never played. For them it's less of a hobby and more of a lifestyle.

I went in one time with my girlfriend because she wanted to see what was on offer. She had a very religious background, part of a cult in the bad meaning of that word, and hadn't done anything of the sort at all as a kid, it was very frowned upon and she was very repressed in that way. Nothing in the store took her fancy. I saw a little thing I thought she might like that needed a phone app to use. I thought about it getting it to play with her over the Internet and as well she could use it herself when I wasn't around. But because of her lack of any childhood experience at all I was pretty sure she wouldn't use it without me pushing her into it, or the other way round really, so I didn't buy it. She hasn't shown any interest in accessories since but neither of us are missing out in anyway.

It's less common in the small towns, sometimes someone will pass through and work out of a hotel or motel for a short time but the motel owners don't usually like it. The hobby trade isn't illegal but it is still stigmatised and they don't like having strangers come around.

I suppose if yours wanted more business you'd need to advertise. Is yours a dark hole or something a lot brighter and cheerier that the store owners decorated to make it look nicer? They use verified pics around here, do you have any?

>>97632398
NAYRT but Anon said Eastern Europe, so presumably he's from a place that was still Soviet in the 70s and 80s.

>>97632032
I hope he does. It might be fun and evil wizards should have good loot.

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>>97632398
>>97632556
Croatia, so not exactly Soviet, but socialist. Yugoslavia was the ally of NATO, but still poor because of loans for non-profitable businesses to stay afloat because as soon as people lost theirnjobs the federation broke up.technically you could travel to either East or West, but importing the tabletop hobby was impossible.
To pull that off you needed 3 generations. Silent generation (early modern peasants who found work in factories, still doing farming in spare time, primary education), boomers (secondary education, a little bit better jobs, not well-paid, but with more free time), and finally millennials (tertiary education, born with computer mouse in their hands). Non-Anglo tabletop markets like the one in Brazil developed thanks to wealthy elite educated in the US where they were introduced to tabletops, so the regular people wanted to imitate then. Yugoslavia had no such hipsters and no fertile ground for the hobby so early. It's much easier to import rock and roll and synthpop than a hobby where grownups play pretend.
>>97632531
Because I live in the north and have no idea what goes on in coastal cities because I don't go there nor do I know people who live there. Shops are dying. EU had to implement customs on Temu and shit just to stop poor people from getting junk in cheaper way. Physical shops are closing down all the time.

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>>97629637
back from the session and deadlock after.
the gang ponied up the bones for a cart with two horses, three mercs, and a small platoon that is going to clear the hex to the north for their forward base near the caverns of thracia. i tried to put the squeeze on them since they've amassed a decent bit of wealth but they still ended up a little too affluent in the money department. they ended up asking for jewelry to flash their wealth and i just skimmed like 10% off whatever they felt like "converting" into trinkets before they set out for adventure.

they retraced some of their steps from when they last were here and had the idea of searching the wall near that flame statue trap thing toward the west side of the first floor, and found the secret door into the ripped open cathedral. everything was cool until being set upon by a handful of death cultists. i found this thing called a "dark creeper" in the ose monster manual and one of them has a magic helmet of telepathy so it seemed appropriate. it was also a pretty funny prank because i mentioned he was taller than the rest (just wrong, i glazed over the part where it says they're like 4' tall lol), so they focus fired him killing him instantly, only to then all (but one) get blinded. i saw that blind people can't attack, but that felt somewhat silly to say since it's not paralysis it's just being unable to see. i let them swing around and made it so they had to roll twice and take the lowest and whatever was in front of them got hit instead (the fighter got smacked around by everyone). the blindness lasted a full six rounds too which is brutal.

another two encounter rolls later led to lizard men squeezing in through the narrow secret passage and getting ambushed by firebombs from the group since at this point they were pretty beat up. a grand total of something like 19 kills in the caverns and a couple thousand gold led to the dwarf, fighter, and magic user all leveling up on getting back to town.

>>97633288
We have the same problem. I was in a store last year and someone was telling the store keeper and other people, "I got this cheaper from temu, I got this cheaper." The shop keeper did not feel good. The other people probably bought less and went to temu. But not me. I have never shopped on temu.

Like temu, many of the hobby things here come from Asia. They are often short term. Sometimes they move around as they seek new customers, you cannot find them in the same place after a month or two. There are local suppliers but they demand more money for the same services. I think the locals can compete as it is a specialised service with low competition and no one expects it to be given away from free.

Except my girlfriend of course, she has given me more than anyone else before, more even than my mother. My father has never given me any, I am glad for that. Still I am not happy with my girlfriend for a long time now. I think maybe we need to break up and seek our pleasure elsewhere with other people.

If that photo is of your shop it is a good size. It is not too large. I can see now how you can have one or maybe two shops where you say. It is more tidy and less sticky that I was thinking. There is one public facing front door, does it have a backdoor too? Is the backdoor public or private entry by invitation only? I knew one owner well enough I could always use the backdoor.

There are many boxes. I was expecting to see a lot of box and you did not disappoint.

There are many pokemon too. I was expecting many pokemon. I even see some pokemon in a small box on the sales counter, that is where the money is, pokemon in a box. Not in big boxes which make a farting sound when you open them, little packs that you tear open for the first time.

Thank you for helping me to understand how you hobby store works. I have only one or two friends from Croatia but they do not play games and they do not live there any more so their knowledge is not up to date like ours.

>>97633584
That's the store, yes. There's a table in the back you can reserve for gaming sessions. As you can see it's mostly about board games. The specialty dice are in the glass cabinet.

>>97629038
Also BECMI had really cool art, while B/X was hit or miss and early AD&D was straight up trash.

What are some trap-happy modules?
My players had an absolute blast with Tomb of Horrors and want more. I have [heavily modified] Rappan Athuk lined up for the next one-shot but it is notorious for becoming a slog after a certain point, so it'd be nice to have backups.
System doesn't matter, as I'll be adapting modules anyway to change and switch things around as I fully expect my players to at least try to look up the source material.
>Just make your own
I have something in the works but designing devious deathtrap dungeons takes a surprising amount of time. I'll also gladly take any modules with interesting ideas to yoink.

>>97633979
I remember one of the old LotFP modules, I think it's The Grinding Gear? was supposed to be all traps.

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>>97633979
>but designing devious deathtrap dungeons takes a surprising amount of time.
It was half a joke at the time but there's Grimtooth's Traps.

>>97633776
>BECMI had really cool art
Coffee table NuSR faggot detected.

>>97634939
Core BECMI and Gazetteers covers are top-notch.
Sorry you have such axe to grind you cannot assess anything impartially.

Are you really supposed to roll on every single 1st level spell to find out if you can ever learn it when you first make your MU, even before you collect a single experience point? Shouldn't the DM do that?

>>97633994
Oh yeah, The Grinding Gear is pretty good. I skimmed LotFP modules but I was kind of put off by stuff like Death Frost Doom, which punishes players for completing it. I prefer rewarding players for managing to get through the meatgrinder, not gloating that 'the only winning move was not to play'.
>>97634173
Thanks for reminding me, Grimtooth's collection is unironically good inspiration. But coming up with traps in general isn't the most time-consuming part, instead it's integrating them and making the dungeon feel... cohesive, for the lack of a better word.
Stuff like puzzles affecting other parts of the dungeon, ominous riddles alluding to things to come which are one part truth and two parts lie, multiple ways to do things, dungeon- or floor-wide gimmicks, and of course traps and obstacles that are best resolved through cunning rather than rolls.

>>97631537
>I like Risk and Catan
Not OSR, take it to another thread

>>97634939
nta but cool art is essential
it sparks imagination and seeds cool ideas
and most importantly it instantly sets common expectations for the entire table

>>97629225
Kids used to use their imagination a lot more. Without access to computers, with less than 10 channels on tv, it was something they were much more used to doing. I would guess they were playing a bit differently than you may be thinking, more freeform, not terribly concerned with the actual rules, or making something cohesive. Yeah they make a dungeon, but they might drop a dragon in the middle of a dungeon with zero concept of how it fit through the door, even though the whole dungeon had been nothing but bears until then. Maybe you don't have that image, but I'm thinking of kids running around a playground going "stop robber! Bang bang, I shot you, you're dead!" "Nuh uh, I have a quantum forcefield, the bullets missed!" Type stuff, where the rules are often just giving them a basic framework and inspiration, and sometimes the guy with 18 str just says he cuts off the orcs head in a single blow and everyone just goes with it because hey he's strong why shouldn't he be able to do that?

>>97635055
I can assess it impartially: My assessment is that it doesn't matter. D&D is a game to be played, not an illustration book to be looked at.

>>97635201
>Are you really supposed to roll on every single 1st level spell to find out if you can ever learn it when you first make your MU, even before you collect a single experience point?
No, you can check spells as they come up.

>Shouldn't the DM do that?
Why would he, and how would that improve anything?

>>97635548
Second. Proper old school art is often crappy and amateurish and that's A-OK. Nice art is cool, and can be fun, but it's not an important consideration when playing the game.

>>97635336
Bullshit. OD&D worked perfectly fine with basically no art.

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>>97635596
A party heard tell from their DM that there were rumors of Kobolds nearby.
>I had better find a farmer to get milk to offer as tribute, the rest of you ask around town to find whose home it has bound itself to.
Says Player 1.
>No! We need to search for magics that will detect traps, and cold blooded creatures!
Cries Player 2. The party descends into chaos, arguing amongst themselves.
The DM groans in exasperation.
>Guys, did you even look at the monster manual? You need wind magic so as to send them into a panic when their candles get blown out!

"Essential" is overstating it a little at worst. Obviously you can play without any art at all, but a picture is a far more efficient way to communicate some things. If the 3 blind men are each feeling a different part of the elephant, that's going to cause issues that could have easily been avoided, and it is literally impossible to not take anything for granted and explain every little detail as a DM. Having a baseline everyone understands with just a glance helps.

>>97635808
>inventing imaginary problems: the post
If you played games you'd know this doesn't happen.

>>97635890
It's nice when the first four words of a post tell me I can just stop reading there. Extremely convenient.

>>97635908
Regardless, nobody has ever actually had that problem at a table, it's total fabrication.

>>97628711
So, the entirety of the keep on the borderlands wilderness map fits into an 6 mile hex or did I do the wrong math?

>>97634939
NAYRT but Elmore's black and white art is better than his color art IMO.

>>97635808
>3 people believe different shit about a creature they've never seen
How is this a problem?

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>>97636102
It fits inside a THREE mile hex. The ones in picrel are one mile each.

>>97635808
>Unwittingly confirming that he is, indeed, a NuSR faggot who doesn't play games.

>>97635555
The way it's worded makes it seem like the MU has to check every standard spell of a level as soon as he's able to cast them, I'm just wondering if that's right.
>Why would he, and how would that improve anything?
Idk, it might prevent suiciding a character that can only learn meme spells? And if you found a scroll of a spell you never encountered before maybe you'd hold onto it to see if you can add it to your spellbooks instead of looking in your sheet and using it right away if you know you can never learn it.

>>97635201
>>97636238
In AD&D? Yeah, you are, I don't know why the other guy's denying it. You're supposed to check all the spells in a level upon first gaining the ability to cast spells of that level, arguably with the exception of the starting spells allotted to you by the procedure in the DMG.

>>97635548
The comment was about art. I am sorry if you are functionally illiterate AND with an Axe to grind.
Also how does the ACKS shills reconcile with this? ACKS has several component lifted from BECMI (C) and a few GAZeteers.

>>97636238
>The way it's worded
>>97636397
>I don't know why the other guy's denying it.
Yeah, apologies, what I said earlier came out wrong. I agree that RAW you'd have to check them all when you create the character, what I meant to say is that if you just check spells as you try to learn them, it's pretty much the same. The main exception being if you have a stupid MU who didn't manage to learn enough spells after completing the first pass, so you have to check again. But that's pretty rare.

>>97635808
>>97636688
Fishfag = nogames retard who only reads books confirmed once again.

>>97636713
I am not Fishfag, and you failed to address my question.

>>97636688
>seething about ACKS out of absolutely nowhere
You're getting really high strung, fagmachine. Solitude getting to you? Or just starting to regret castrating yourself?

>>97636706
Oh, right, yeah, you can definitely house rule it without difficulty. And you're right, it's really just the minimum spells learned and second pass if you fail to reach the minimum that *require* doing it as written.

>>97636713
>any disagreement is just labeled as fishfag
how did one guy manage to mindbreak a general so hard

>>97636756
>any disagreement
See >>97636755
>seething about ACKS out of absolutely nowhere
His weird ACKS obsession is well established at this point, anon, try to keep up.

>>97635596
OD&D didn't work perfectly well. Fuck, it barely worked at all, and its why the game got popular. It was an autistic jumble of bullshit that people felt compelled to fix at their own individual tables.
That said, your other point still stands. OD&D didn't just have basically no art. The art it did have was downright shit.

>>97637158
NTA, OD&D works perfectly well once you understand it. *

* Understanding it requires careful reading, thought, and access to Chainmail

>>97636760
The rest of the thread would rather not have to. You're as much as an obsessed loser projecting gameless energy as he is. How about instead of turning every thread even remotely close to retro D&D into bitching about him, you just report his posts and move on with your life. He gets deleted frequently.

>>97637172
Careful reading, thought and access to Chainmail is why I know it's a half-functioning mess of a game. The problem isn't the amateurish and somewhat sloppy presentation of the rules. It's many of the actual decisions about how the game is supposed to work.

>>97637189
Look for Greyharp's D&D Single Volume edition. The game is perfectly playable without Chainmail or Outdoor Survival.

>>97637189
>It's many of the actual decisions about how the game is supposed to work.
Many, eh? Name three. And then explain how come so many of us can play the game just fine and even consider the rules better in some cases than any subsequent edition.

>>97635596
>OD&D worked perfectly fine
Worked so fine they revised it four fucking times.

>>97638112
>this dumb quip again
shameful display, anon

>>97637494
ah yes "no u"
Its clearly stolen, and the fact that you think this is a negative proves that youre fucked in the head.
Plenty of D&D monsters are stolen, and for good reason.

>>97635808
beyond stupid fucking post. kill yourself, nogames

>>97636688
Fucking what does ACKS have to do with this? Are you a broken chatbot?

>>97638299
Ignore it, it just wants (You)s

>>97635596
maybe "essential" was too strong of a word to use, yes a game can work with limited art also I consider whitebox booklets cover art pretty cool
but nevertheless cool art is of paramount importance for the reasons I spelled out

>>97638922
>paramount importance
It's not. The DM describes the monsters, the players ask questions to clarify, and nobody actually needs to wave around a piece of art at the table for any reason. I mean, you can do it if you like, but it's not necessary or even all that helpful.

>>97638926
>nobody actually needs to wave around a piece of art at the table
correct
who said anything about it though?
you should stop trying to assume and start reading the posts
nobody actually needs to because entire table has already established a common baseline when checking out cool art in the rulebook

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Welp.
According to staff, the hijacking is A-OK.
I'm done posting here now.
Celebrate your sowing today, and reap it's consequences tomorrow.

>>97639246
Lmao get rekt trolling faggot

>he openly admits to the mod that he wanted to free-ride off the general because nobody else likes his shit offtopic preferred game
>exactly like anons have been saying for years
lmao get fagged, rekkot

>>97639246
See you in 200 posts.

>>97639246
ACKS good!

>>97639246
>fish pic to censor IP
considering there is basically no viability of this being the actual fishfag who posted this image I suppose this is leaked by the mod he was having a discussion with?

>>97639246
>im simply unable to make another thread to discuss the topics I want as there's not enough interest to maintain a stable flow of activity
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

>>97640381
can anyone here willing to log into IRC and see his username?

>>97637449
>Elves
>Turn Order
>Dungeon turns
You take rules from later revisions made by people who cared, and pretend like they're in the pamphlets.

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>>97639246
Maybe this timeline isn't so bad after all.

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.

>>97639246
MODS = GODS


>IP is concealed with a fish
kek

>Celebrate your sowing today, and reap it's consequences tomorrow.
Nigger what consequences? You outright admitted yourself that your game isn't even popular on /tg/ as a whole, let alone in this general. Now you think we're going to regret losing the voluminous 2e footfall? Or what, is it the incessant tardposting about fake definitions of the OSR we're going to miss? Nigger if this turns back into a slow comfy general where we discuss Blackmoor minutia and bump the thread to keep it from dying every few days, and nobody ever mentions 2e, that's the best possible outcome.

>>97640426
>Elves
>Elves can begin as either Fighting-Men or Magic-Users and freely switch class whenever they choose, from adventure to adventure, but not during the course of a single game. Thus, they gain the benefits of both classes and may use both weaponry and spells.
The last quoted sentence is key; it shows that which class they are in a given adventure is relevant only to XP gain: you get to decide in advance whether you adventure as a Fighting-Man or Magic-User and the class in question gains all XP obtained. Doesn't require any revision or other edition and in fact no other edition works that way.

>Turn Order
Comes out of Chainmail like the rest of the combat rules. Access to Chainmail was already stipulated and this is not a bad decision about how the game is supposed to work at all, Chainmail initiative order works fine.

>Dungeon turns
I have to admit I'm stumped here, what supposed difficulty are you referring to?

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>>97640514
huh neat

I mostly play BX and BX-like systems so perhaps AD&D players will know this one already - if you do, please help me.

Which class of armor would a legionnaire Lorica Segmentata be? AC6 or AC5 are the most likely.
I presume is "harder" than a chainmail but limbs are more exposed.
I was even thinking AC6 but counts as AC5 with a large shield but I didn't want to over-complicate it.

>>97640628
are there any good softwares one can tweak to generate these or is better that I sit down and try to write one?

>>97640848
use hexfriend, and if you get bored of that, hexographer/worldographer + crack

>>97640861
Is any of those a procedural generator?

>>97640842
"Banded mail" is pretty much canonically lorica segmentata. It grants AC 4 in AD&D, one better than chain, so that's probably what you'd expect for Basic as well.

>>97640890
Hexographer has the option to procgen but it doesn't produce terribly good results.

>>97640890
no, but those can be easily found (but not cross-compatible iirc)

>>97640911
>>97640919
Thanks. I indeed asked because I cannot find much. AD&D 1e DMG has material that could help because certain terrain types "spawns" only close to certain types.

>>97640911
>"Banded mail" is pretty much canonically lorica segmentata.
Is it tho?I thought BM was indeed similar to LS armor but "on top" (very roughly speaking) on padding and/or mail to get that AC4.
After all plate mail is AC 3

>>97641039
FWIW I agree with the Anon you replied to:
Lorica squamata = scale mail = AC 6
Lorica hamata = chain mail = AC 5
Lorica segmentata = banded mail = AC 4

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>>97641128
Thank you anon. I will decide but I have a framework. Thank you so much.

What about this thing? I would put it in the same class of the Splint Mail.

>>97641039
The DMG describes banded mail as being worn over padding and augmented with chainmail in gaps, but virtually every illustration of it ever made is just a segmentata. Anon here is correct about the levels of Roman armor: >>97641128

>>97641185
I'd say that's a splint mail, yes. It's a little bit harder to be decisive in that case because "splint mail" is like studded leather in that it's not real, the product of Gygax misunderstanding something in a picture. The DMG (page 27) description is
>Splint Mail consists of light chain, greaves, and a leather coat into which are laminated vertical pieces of plate with shoulder guards
which, as you might identify immediately, isn't something that was ever worn. Real splinted armor consisted of arm and leg pieces; in the west it was a common part of a suit of armor in like the late 13th/early 14th century, and of course you've seen the Japanese shin and forearm armour made of (originally bamboo) splints. Splinted body armor is just not very convenient, though.

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Same thing this guy.
I presume the horse has a Lamellar. The Guy is 1 point better than AC 5 because is more than a mail.
What do you anons think?

>>97641254
>Gygax misunderstanding something
On second thought, I should be fair to Gary here: he probably wasn't even responsible for this misunderstanding, most likely he had some book on medieval pop-history written in the '50s or '60s which misunderstood it for him, and he himself did nothing worse than accept his source as accurate.

>>97641274
>most likely he had some book on medieval pop-history written in the '50s or '60s which misunderstood it for him,
Yeah. There were way less chances of a thorough research and even if you did have a chance, probably the sources would be full of info that we know consider obsolete.

>>97641267
Looks like banded mail + shield (AC 3) to me. The plated/banded parts are kinda shitty, but on the other hand you've got full-body chainmail coverage.

>>97641316
Exactly. It's not like he could just look up a Wikipedia page complete with full-color photos of the internal construction of an up-to-date replica made by someone whose entire day job is making freakishly accurate armor for reenactors, or watch free 30-minute high-definition videos of HEMAtards shooting a 200 lb. longbow at a dummy wearing a brigandine to test the penetration. Fuck's he gonna do, realistically?

>>97641193
>>97641318
>>97641254
Thank you anons

>>97641437
Keep in mind that adding this amount of granularity is basically like letting your players buy +1 chainmail at the outset.

>>97641590
Granularity? This is the opposite. Basically I want to be sure I make most type of armor one can meet fall within the classical 7 to 3 AC with no further complication.
Armor equivalents, so to speak. Price, AC, all, even if the PC travel in a distant land.

>>97640400
Leave the guy be, he's clearly got some form of learning disability, following him around now would be a two-wrongs kind of situation. Be glad he's finally gotten the point through his thick head and decided to leave us be.

It's a shame, we told him so many times over the years to just make a thread about what he wanted to talk about (that wasn't a replacement of, or blatant, or thinly-veiled attack on this one) but the guy was so mindbroken by the idea of trolls that he refused to believe it when people spoke honestly to him. If he had actually listened, we might have been rid of his shitposting nonsense ages ago.

>>97641689
Eh, try it and see how it works. It's simple to think of AC 3 as heavy, 5 as medium and 7 as light and extrapolate, is all.

>>97641847
I mean, what he's doing is hardly anything new. That's pretty much what AD&D and the BECMI Companion do already.

>>97639246
>>97641881
This might be fishfag's most pathetic and desperate attempt to date to convince everyone that he's more than one person.

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So there really were two of them! The more eloquent one wised up, and that just leaves the stupid one

>>97641881
>all of us

>>97641925
NTA - I fought with an anon that I am 99% sure was fishfag but I was also accused to be fishfag a few threads later just because i disagreed on something here.
I understand this guy is frustrating and insufferable, I understand the paranoia due to all the threads he shat on but you cannot answer to any disagreement with "le fishfag".

>>97640628
What goes on in Meatlandia?

>>97641926
I also started to suspect this, like the guy who seethed extensively and wrote longass screeds of makebelieve OSR history is the one who dipped and >>97641881 is the full-retard one who makes up absurd names and accusations and can't spell. But actually, if you read >>97641881 carefully it seems to repeat all the same accusations (specifically, this deranged idea that all the real conversation in the thread is fake, boring and "BrOSR") *and* also have resigned himself to leaving so I think it's actually the same guy. I don't think they would both just agree to quit at the same time, right?

What a nutter. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

>>97642443
"The Chaos Gods Come to Meatlandia" is an obscure, stupid-weird setting that came out a long time ago, sort of Rientsesque in tone. It didn't make much of an impact or attain much popularity as I recall.

>>97642562
What a shame. I was expecting meat everywhere

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>>97642443
Its from when Gonzo was more of a thing in the osr psychedelic and metal kind of milieu. Before the coming of D E S I G N E R S and whatever
flavour of taking themselves too seriously is hip.
Its got stuff like Chaos DJ as a player class.

>>97641881
the mods speak for us all, and they SAID "FUCK OFF WITH POSTING HIJACK THREADS, FISHFAG"

>>97642296
t. fishfag

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are the OSRIC 3.0 books worth looking into?

>>97642934
Modules by Chomy are always worth looking into. As for the core books, probably only if you like Finch's house rules or really, really can't figure out how to deal with AD&D initiative on your own.

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>run a non-OSR game that is basically domain play
>lots of in-depth roleplaying of noble intrigue
>storyshitting to the max
>but the characters have a great degree of agency
>the "plot" is an actual plot of a group of NPCs
>the characters regularly derail it and things have to change
>actual ACKS-level autism of managing logistics and individual minor noble events, or procedures, is not present
>however it is extremely engaging to the players, to the point that they are looking forward more to each session of this game than anything else I have ever run in many years of playing with them.
How do I take this and apply it to running OSR domain play? I love the idea of sandbox domain play and procedures organically leading to intense roleplay, almost like this Braunstein-type of game where multiple PCs might even have secrets from each other, engage in deep negotiations, analyze situations (as best as they can given the knowledge possible of a medieval nobleman when it comes to his own domain), and deal with other events. But I feel like if there isn't at least SOME storyshitting, the domain level play is going to get boring. But at the same time, when I have gotten close to that in a game, the idea that any storyshitting or contrived plots might happen, would frustrate me greatly.

So what gives? Is OSR just genuinely not for everyone? Or is there a way to make domain play engaging that compromises storyshitting and procedural ACKS-style autism?

This is a genuine question asked in good faith and I will reply to people's answers tomorrow.

>>97643094
>Is OSR just genuinely not for everyone?
Its this.
You can likely use various faction turn rules from the Sine Nomine/ X without number cluster or more granular rules like ACKS, or various events in the world tables for your own between session prep and inspiration and making the game world more engaging but if kingdom management isn't a they're into trying to force it isn't going to work.
Might be able to get some of them into domain level wargaming with fairly rules light beer and pretzels wargames and narrative campaigns that tie back into the more roleplay heavy sessions.

>>97643094
>Is OSR just genuinely not for everyone
no shit, take a wild guess

>>97643131
How to refute storyshitters saying that their method is superior because it results in higher player engagement? Genuine question. Because the autists like me (and possibly you, and a lot of the people in this general) seem to be in the minority and also do not have as interesting of table stories in many ways.

Also, coherent plots are realistic.
And badly simulated by a table.
Because a 2d6 table is going to produce widlly-varying entries that tend toward a mean of 7, for example. Thus a "world events" table is going to slowly tend toward the status quo, in most cases. Which, in the greater sense when it comes to history, is true. But also, huge empires have swept across the world conquering huge swathes of land, and the idea that that sort of "snowballing" effect can be well modeled by random event tables, seems unlikely. The coherent plotting of a medieval Illuminati, cannot be simulated or brought about by tables. But it IS a realistic thing, in the context of "realism" in a fantasy world. Such a thing would happen.

And I feel like it can only be brought about through "storyshit" (I don't know what else to call it, because it's not "railroading" but it is intentional pushing of a plot by the DM).

Again, this is a genuine question.
Because I have dreamed of a sandbox zero-to-hero multi-campaign mega-domain-saga type of game that has huge complexity to it. And yet, the campaign I have been running aside from OSR, has achieved a lot of these goals in terms of being something deep and complex and engaging to the players.

So is what I want just not possible in the OSR?
Because stuff like Birthright and people running 30-year-campaigns with it (some YouTube guy always goes on about his 20 year Birthright campaign) seems to be well in line with the OSR, or at least with what ACKS fags want.

>>97643117
How good are the faction turn rules in Crawford's games? I've played in campaigns with them and they just seem to produce background noise. Can they "respond" to players' actions when they reach a domain scale themselves?
>or more granular rules like ACKS
ACKS doesn't seem to have an actual random event simulator, just logistics rules. I mean other than peasant rebellions.

I dream of making a cellular automata history simulator that can be run on a hexcrawl and simulated by hand by a GM between sessions, both on an abstract level, but also can be broken down into game terms for "zoom in" moments for the next session (i.e. a raiding party of Power 4 has entered your hex 0304, this converts to a group of 40 archers, 80 infantry, and 20 horsemen, let's play out your response to this).

But that's probably an insane pipe dream.

>Might be able to get some of them into domain level wargaming with fairly rules light beer and pretzels wargames and narrative campaigns that tie back into the more roleplay heavy sessions.
Any suggestions for systems for this? Is ACKS mass battle actually good?

>>97643131
(just an addendum)

I would be an ACKS fag but there are too many different classes and too much of the implied setting injected into the supplements, just too much bloat honestly. I really wish it had been a B/X clone with the domain rules stapled on top.

>>97643201
>How to refute storyshitters saying that their method is superior because it results in higher player engagement?
Why would you want to "refute" people who try to pass their own personal preferences for objective facts? Ignore and move on. You certainly have better uses for your time, e.g. playing games or going for a walk in a park.

>>97643094
>I feel like if there isn't at least SOME storyshitting, the domain level play is going to get boring.
Give it a try and see.
No, seriously, try a game without a metaplot and instead focus on the idea of 'This is an ongoing world where shit is in situ. Nothing has to happen, but anything might.'
Make up a map with a bunch of domains and locations of interest, figure out how things stand at the start of the game/who is who and what is where, then drop the PCs into it with a charter to start a kingdom/whatever point in the domain play you want them to start and see how things go.
Make sure each potential location pisses someone or something off and roll the ball on from there.

It'll work better than you think it might, because your average player will piss someone off somewhere along the way and things can just go from here.

>>97643210
>ACKS doesn't seem to have an actual random event simulator
False. It has a bunch of tables for what it calls "vagaries".

>>97643210
>Is ACKS mass battle actually good?
It's okay. Brutal scaling is much better.

>>97639246
Anon, I'm going to say this in the gentlest, kindest way I possibly can after all this time dealing with your bullshit.
1: Hiding your IP with a fish? Fucking hilarious, 10/10
2: The mod is right, leave us alone and stop fucking with us
3: If there are 2 of you, one smart and one retard, could you please take your retard with you when you go? You've both got the same tastes so you can have a thread together

>>97642934
>OSRIC 3
We were promised a retroclone that would clean up and reorganise the AD&D rules. What we got instead is Matt Finch's house rules. I don't have a problem with house rules in principle, but I do have a problem with people trying to pass them for the original rules.

>>97643437
this. its a cashgrab shitbrew, NOT AD&D

>>97643094
>run a non-OSR game that is basically domain play
So, what's the name of the game?
>Is ACKS mass battle actually good?
The basic one in ACKS II is so-so.
You need Domains of War: Battles for ACKS II, which I have no idea when it'll be announced...
There are some PDF on their Patreon, but since they're still working on it, I'd say to wait.
>I would be an ACKS fag but there are too many different classes and too much of the implied setting injected into the supplements
You can make your setting: all the manuals, Treasure Tome too, there are tables to make a S&S or High Fantasy setting work with the system.
About the classes... you can simply choose to not use the ones you dislike.

>>97643094
It sounds like at some point you made the decision to categorize storyshitting as bad, and are having trouble coming to terms with the fact that it's a style of play you enjoy, because your identity has become tied up in this idea that you are the kind of person who finds storyshitting distasteful. I would suggest you play the kind of game you enjoy, and stop worrying about whether the kids who skip class to smoke behind the bleachers are going to think you're a basic bitch.

>>97643201
>simulated or brought about by tables
This suggests what may be the core of your problem IMO. "Storyshitting" is when you tie your players to a chair and read your novel to them while they wait to be allowed to play a game, but there's a big field of good DMing between that and what you seem to have hit upon here, which is a silly meme version of the OSR where the DM doesn't decide anything unless it comes up on a random table.

Random tables are good, you should use them, but you shouldn't be a slave to them either. In the same way that you don't need to do a reaction roll to see whether the clockwork guardian golem that was set to stop anyone from entering the sunken city is going to be friendly and let the players pass, you don't need to roll on random tables to decide what the various powers on the map are doing if you can say with confidence "this is what these guys want and here's how they plan to get it."

You don't roll on tables in that case, you just have them do what makes sense. Tables are for clearing up uncertainty, and to spice things up with an occasional bit of randomness, they're not a straitjacket that you have to use in all situations.

>>97643528
This.
The thing I have always done with worldbuilding, in both OSR and other games, is try to have a clear understanding of what the major non-player characters and forces will do without the players throwing a rock into the stream.

It works in games set at the village level with 20 NPCs total and it works with games set at the country level where the main NPCs are Literally Kingdoms.

If you know the broad attitudes and goals of each "NPC" and "Group", you can tell what will happen if the players don't examine it or intervene, and you can quickly work out what will happen if and when the players do Dumbfuck Player Things.

Consider that classic greentext about the Gay Marriage Capaign that ends with a Lich sending armies of the undead to roll across the world and kill everything. That's a case of knowing what happens if the players do not act on the main story. In a more realistic, not just funny greentext example, if the players were to focus on castlebuilding and diplomacy in such a setting they'd run into more and more problems with the undead rising and causing trouble, hopefully prompting them to go look into what's up.

If nobody watches the currents, nobody puts a hand on the rudder, and nobody makes the effort to move the oars, a boat will follow the tides.

Your players should have the power to move that boat, but there is still going to be a path the boat would take without their work. THAT is the "default story" of your game which the players reject by their actions forging a path of their own.

tldr; Post not safe for stupid people.

>>97635201
>do you roll to know all 1st level spells at character creation?

No. As another anon mentioned, first level is slightly different to second through ninth level spells. New MU automatically know read magic and three other first level spells selected by d10 rolls instead of the d100 "Chance to Know Listed Spell" (CTK) roll.

Generally, rolling to learn all spells at the instant you gain a new spell level is permissible but not required.

An Int 12 MU can learn 5 to 7 spells per level.
Let's assume he had to roll for them all at character creation. Now he finds a scroll of charm person and wants to learn it as the example on page 10 says.

He has his 4 starters. If he passed 3 more CTK on his first run through the spell list he reached 7 and stopped. He's maxed out and can't then roll CTK for the charm scroll. No problem.

If he passed CTK 1 or 2 times his spell total is 5 or 6 and he has space for 1 or 2 more.

Problem: this space can't be for charm.

Either he already passed CTK for charm, so no roll now, or he failed CTK for charm and he doesn't get to roll for spells more than once.

The only way he can roll for the same spell more than once is if when rolling through the list the first time he failed CTK for all 26 spells (that's 30 less the 4 start spells). But even if he did fail all 26 (1 in 5.5 million chance) the assumption that he has to roll all spells at once meant he kept on rolling until he reached the 5 minimum.

Charm is not a Heretofore Unknown Spell so it doesn't count under the Heretofore Unknown Spell Rule. Unless he's energy drained then regains levels, or Int changes, or DM fiat, he doesn't get to re-test spells in an already tested group.

The assumption "must roll all level 1 spells at creation" is wrong. That the example shows a magic-user rolling for a first level spell during an adventure tells you that assumption is wrong.

Without loss of generality this applies to all spells and levels.

>>97644006
>Problem: this space can't be for charm.
Why is this supposed to be a problem? If an M-U rolls to see whether he can learn Charm Person, then later finds a Charm Person scroll, he's boned; that's not a problem, that's the rules working as intended.

It is wild seeing how much more a mutant future character can deal with over a regular D&D character. I went into my first session with them destroying most things, thought I prepared a bigger challenge for the second only to see a dude nuke a room with radiation. It was wild.

>>97644060
Oh, wait. On a second read, I think I see what your mistake is: you've just misunderstood what the min and max spells are, and you think that as long as an M-U hasn't reached his max he still "has space" for new spells. That absolutely isn't how it works, however. Only if you don't reach your *minimum* do you still have the space to learn further spells; a given INT 12 Magic-User tops out at between 5 and 7 spells known, variable per person. If you go through the whole level 1 list and find you're able to learn 5 or 6 spells, that's your permanent limit, not 7. That's the whole purpose of specifying a minimum and maximum separately, to give a *range* of possible numbers of spells known.

>example
That particular example is known to be at odds with not only the rule as written but the very next example. It's incoherent with every other piece of information about how spell acquisition works, so it should just be disregarded as an artifact of an earlier ieratin of the rules (specifically, before Gygax actually thought through how spell minimums would work and be obtained).

>>97644080
Play the excellent Mutants & Mazes variant in the appendix if you want something closer to the D&D experience.

>>97643201
>>97643210
You seem to misunderstand basically everything.
You don't refute preferences, doesn't work that way. You can sometimes put forward better solutions to problems but you don't seem to have a good grasp on what those are either. The most obvious being the 2d6 curve in what you would classically call story shit (and be wrong) is pbta, in which the middle of the curve is actually built to create the most activity.
The tables and faction turns in any domain scale make what you call background noise that also engages with the players, the DM adapts the results to suit. Its not automated. TTRPGs aren't automated.
You have to do the work in any case. Its more about what work you and the players want to do. The background noise made by various narrative game faction turns or various osr tables tend to both be procedural. The DM or whoever can alter the results or improvise as they like, there are no game cops, although the results get less interesting the less you run with the random results.

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>>97643201
>The coherent plotting of a medieval Illuminati, cannot be simulated or brought about by tables.
Why not?
Create a 'Devious Schemes of the faggots in the funny robes brigade' and roll on it once every quarter, note down their resources and who is leading them/alive/active as an agent, have the middle play more towards them gaining power or influence, then have them able to expend resources to roll on a second table for the Bullshit They're Currently Up To.

You, as DM, wouldn't be pushing a plot, you'd be enacting the will of the NPCs on the setting.
You're not telling the PCs how to feel about it, how to be involved or engage in it.
Shit, could the players join the Illuminati? Work with them but remain distant? ect?
If so it's not storyshitting, storyshitting is when you, as DM, are going in with it all mapped out and don't allow any deviation regardless of if it makes sense or not. It's "No you can't join that faction, they're the bad guys."

Let me put it this way;
Having a living, breathing world is 'This shit is going on, what do you do?'
Storyshit is 'This shit is going on, here's what you're going to do about it.'

>>97643370
>It'll work better than you think it might, because your average player will piss someone off somewhere along the way and things can just go from here.
But then it feels like any actions intentionally taken by an NPC faction is storyshit.
Like the pissed off noble sends an assassin to kill you and you have to make a save or die from poison.
And that seems to get called storyshit by some OSR people I know.
Are they in the minority?

>>97643368
I want to refute them because my experience lines up with theirs and I don't want to believe it.

>>97643370
I will try this, however, despite my concerns. I have been in domain OSR play as a player, but not as a DM yet.
I just feel like them "pissing someone off" might be a minor thing that I overreact to in the hopes of creating political drama, and it looks like railroading even more than my current game that had a political scenario to start out with. Because while players are clumsy sorts who tread on lots of toes, they also tend to be vastly more reactive than proactive. Even the troublemakers.

>>97643373
>Brutal scaling is much better.
How exactly does this work? I'm reading about it and it sounds like you just turn the armies into giant monsters or something?

>>97643372
Okay I just found that in my 2e PDFs I haven't fully read yet. That definitely wasn't in 1e which is what I'm most familiar with. But 2e is also just so huge that it's hard to get through.

I really really really wish he'd just stuck to basic B/X shit for his system. Not that it isn't compatible but i like a system i just can run out of the box.

>>97645568
Anon there are people out there who'll call anything short of beating the next goblin in line to death for his hoard of cumsocks storyshitting.
Stop worrying about what is or isn't storyshitting and start thinking more in terms of 'Do the players have choice or not'
If you pre-planned for them to piss off the nobles and they're secretly the BBEG of the entire campaign who you have to railroad the PCs into fighting when they keep trying to work with them?
That's a railroad.

If meanwhile the nobles ramp things up over time to assassins, or you pre-established that their house motto is 'Futuis circum invenire ex' or that they're cunts who have assassins on speed dial because they go through rivals like a fat kid through a box of twinkies then players are going to be fully aware of the implied consequences of their actions and can make decisions on who they want to piss off.
Basically the difference between storyshitting and osr style is: Are you telling a story or are you refereeing a world?
Are things happening because genre and that's how the tale goes or because that's how these people would react and so on.

You're overthinking it basically.

>>97643476
It's a rules-lite non-narrative-focused RPG, basically like GURPS Lite.

>The basic one in ACKS II is so-so.
Important question I forgot to ask: would this be a system that would allow Napoleon to go 51-0? i.e. can you be le epic brilliant general and win every battle with your wits and a bit of luck? Or will it not be in-depth enough for that.

>>97643511
I guess I would say the crux of my trouble is that I like sandbox/random table/history simulator autism, and I also like a really tense story where most sessions end with a cliffhanger and it's Game-of-Thrones-style tension, and I don't know how to reconcile the two, or if it's possible for both to exist in the same game.

>>97643528
>but there's a big field of good DMing between that and what you seem to have hit upon here, which is a silly meme version of the OSR where the DM doesn't decide anything unless it comes up on a random table.
I guess that's what I am asking. Is there a middle ground between "narrative DMing" and "table DMing" that actually is a genuine (greater) synthesis of the two?

In the game I am currently running I do not use tables at all. I have in my mind what the relative strength of each faction is, I use common sense for the player-facing aspects of the logistics of the world, but none of it matters directly to the game. They never ask.

>>97644260
>You don't refute preferences, doesn't work that way.
But I think we can all agree that a campaign that has the players hugely engaged is superior to one that doesn't. Argumentum ad populum is a fallacy yes, but it wouldn't be that unreasonable to agree, for the purposes of discussion, that Game of Thrones is superior entertainment to C-Span congressional budget read-outs, or whatever. Even if some people watch that.

>TTRPGs aren't automated.
I agree, and for some reason (probably aging slowly taking the edge off of my imagination) I want them to be. To some extent.

>>97645609
>I just feel like them "pissing someone off" might be a minor thing that I overreact to in the hopes of creating political drama, and it looks like railroading even more than my current game that had a political scenario to start out with. Because while players are clumsy sorts who tread on lots of toes, they also tend to be vastly more reactive than proactive. Even the troublemakers.
Then go into the game aware of that and when they piss someone off?
Think of other ways they could react beyond 'Chinless noble has a tantrum'

Do yourself a 2d6 table with 2 being 'Forgiven and invited for dinner' and 12 being 'I want him alive, I want his family dead, I want his house burned to the ground and him to have to watch as we breed his premium racing horses with cart horse stock and only then will he be allowed to die.' with the offence itself being a bonus/malus on the roll.
Hell do 2 tables, one for crimes of blood/high crimes, one for bloodless crimes/low crimes and then define what each of those terms means which'll basically help define your world and setting.
That kind of thing is gold, it lets you include details that would otherwise just be filler
There's nothing better than the moment players look at a crimes table, squint at it, look up at you and go
>So why do Rape and Rape (Houndchild) have different stat modifiers for if I'm likely to be executed exactly?...the fuck is a Houndchild?
No amount of dumping backstory can get someone interested in a setting, but those small details can get them asking questions and you build up layers from there.

>>97644385
>Having a living, breathing world is 'This shit is going on, what do you do?'
>Storyshit is 'This shit is going on, here's what you're going to do about it.'
So would it be the difference between:
>you are nobles and this noblewoman gets murdered and they are trying to frame you, what do you do?
and
>you are nobles and this noblewoman gets murdered and so you have to take this secret flying ship offered by a mysterious stranger to escape and then it crashes and then you have to seek shelter in the dungeon I spent 500 hours making
?

Or I guses I am asking, where is the line? Because some players genuinely consider "something happened to us and there's only one practical path of action, therefore we're being railroaded" when a lot of times in real life that is simply the case.

>>97645669

>Do yourself a 2d6 table with 2 being 'Forgiven and invited for dinner' and 12 being 'I want him alive, I want his family dead, I want his house burned to the ground and him to have to watch as we breed his premium racing horses with cart horse stock and only then will he be allowed to die.' with the offence itself being a bonus/malus on the roll.
I do think the reaction table is a great thing outside of OSR games even.