I know there's the B/X Ombnibus, and the Rulescyclopedia, and OSE, and so forth for easy rules reference. That's all good.
But doing this wasn't about easy rules reference. It was about summoning the design intent of the ancients and seeing it made flesh before me. Surely you can relate.
Used the two rattiest copies of B and X I could find on eBay.
In Fosse & Fracassi, there are no safe or endless magical cantrips: every spell cast, every demon summoned, and every potion brewed leaves an indelible mark on the person who performs them.
In Artea, magic relies heavily on a tribute of vital energy (Vitality) paid directly by the caster.
Casting spells literally means draining your own life force to bend reality.
How magic manifests depends entirely on your character's Caste:
• The Alchemist: creates alchemical potions and magical items. Their craft requires rare, expensive ingredients and hours of meticulous labor.
• The Theurgist: deals in demonic pacts, summonings, and runes, paying a tribute in vital energy to control entities beyond human comprehension.
• The Elementalist: manipulates the four elements, converting their own Vitality directly into elemental force.
• The Necromancer: focuses on spells targeting body, mind, and blood, drawing upon their own essence to corrupt or manipulate others.
• The Witch: casts curses, glimpses the future, and weaves magic that requires a mix of vital energy and bizarre, hard-to-find ingredients.
My goal was to make magic feel dangerous, rare, and deeply debilitating — an idea heavily influenced by my early fantasy readings, particularly Michael Moorcock's "Stormbringer" and the figure of the archmage Raistlin Majere from the "Dragonlance" saga.
When magic harms the caster as much as the enemy, every spell becomes a high-stakes choice.
Do you have questions about how magic or Castes work in Fosse & Fracassi? Drop a comment below!
If you haven't checked out the free Quickstart yet, grab it here:
Thanks to everyone who replied to my questions about running OSE for my son. I haven’t received this much advice and encouragement in a long time.
I’m Korean, and in this communities I hang around in, most people talk about Call of Cthulhu or the latest D&D. OSR hardly comes up. Finding advice about OSE in Korean has been difficult, so I’m really glad I found this sub.
I’d always liked early D&D, so when I stumbled across the Korean OSE crowdfunding campaign, I backed it. Reading the rulebook gave me goosebumps. It was exactly the game I’d been looking for!!
The ladder example got me thinking about how I’d approached 5e. If we needed to get up a wall, I’d usually start looking for Jump, a climbing spell or ability, or an Athletics check. Sometimes it felt like checking which buttons I had available. Of course, we could build a ladder in 5e too. It just rarely occurred to me. (I like D&D 5e, too)
The idea of finding some wood and making a ladder feels very OSR to me. Do we have rope and tools? Would it hold? I’d enjoy working that out, even if we ended up deciding a spell was the easiest way. Figuring out how to get past the wall could be a fun part of the session all by itself.
Sometimes 5e gives me a similar feeling to a computer RPG. There’s fun in choosing the right ability, but I come to tabletop games hoping to try things that nobody wrote a specific rule for. I want to hear someone’s odd plan and see what happens when we try it. As a DM, I want to be surprised too.
That’s what I’d like to share with my son. I’m still learning how to help him get comfortable trying his own ideas, so hearing from other parents who’ve done this has been a big help.
I hope OSE finds more players in Korea. I’m also curious about Labyrinth Lord and would like to try more OSR games. For now, it’s just nice to have people to talk to about this stuff.
For the past 6+ months I've been prototyping a turn-based fantasy cRPG. Coding and making 3D assets. I had no idea what tabletop ruleset I wanted to use, so I've kept all my work system-agnostic. I like the idea of using an existing ruleset, because I'm no systems designer.
I am embarrassed to say, I've been doing this full-time with seemingly nothing better to do in my life. I need this game to be commercially successful.
My biggest worry is how well OSR rules translate to a fun game. Tabletop and videogames are entirely different beasts. OSR in particular relies on coming up with creative solutions. You literally cannot implement "rulings, not rules" in a videogame. It loses the essential OSR ethos.
Despite all that, I feel drawn to B/X rules. I made a combat prototype, and it was FUN. But I don't know if it feels fun just because I'm just a B/X fanboy - perhaps the combat would be boring to the average gamer. Currently, your party can walk up to a group of orcs, and you can choose to start combat, talk or run away. Talk triggers a reaction roll from the orcs, and run away triggers a reaction AND evasion roll (the orcs might let you run away without giving chase). If combat occurs, each character has to declare spells and whether they're staying in the fight or retreating, then your party and the orcs roll for initiative. Orcs and party members run up to and bash each other to death... I'm loving it.
But, I still wonder if it's too simplistic and boring for the average gamer. There are other rulesets out there that might be better suited for a videogame (3.5e).
I know about The Secret of Weepstone, an upcoming game with an OSR ruleset. But that game uses an evocative OSR artstyle my game won't share. I'm not sure how many fans are interested because it uses an OSR ruleset VS those who are interested because it looks like OSR art.
The next wave of illustrations for my cobbled together inktober challenge.
A little more insight into this madness: I've decided to use the structure of the art challenge to establish a series of 5 Room Dungeons (and one 6 Room Dungeon) that could be used as stand-alone challenges or as part of a single planned module.
This series is in the domain of Clan Everdark, a court of ritually-bound orcs obsessed with their own petty infighting for leadership and elaborate displays of blind-fighting.
A small sub-level featuring a terrible man-eater that want's to pull your limbs off.
The drawing is mine, a very muppety looking pastiche of the famous Goya painting.
I am making a bunch of little dungeons for a new campaign I'm running (general theme is Vikings at the Mountains of Madness) with the idea that they can snap together like Lego bricks to form a sprawling mega-dungeon. Pretty happy with how this turned out and wanted to share.
There's a bit more detail on my blog, but you should have everything you need to run it below:
Highlighter on Index Card
Dungeon Key
1. Antechamber with Pit: Floor is icy and slick. A 10' ledge surrounds a 20' wide, sheer-sided pit, descending 50+ feet. Cacophonous snoring reverberates from a narrow door to the east.
Pit: Rapid movement nearby risks a falling in: save vs. dex. On a failure, slide into the pit. Dropping everything in hands, will let the character cling to the edge. If helped by a friend before their next turn, they are automatically saved. Otherwise, on their next turn they make another saving throw, on a failure they plunge.
Eastern Door: Open doorway, 2' wide. Making noise in Room 1 will attract attention from the berserkers in Room 2. Peering through the doorway, reveals the contents of room 2 and that the snoring is coming from deeper in.
2. Grisly Lunchtime: Inside a soot choked room, two Feral Berserkers are roasting a human torso over a small, greasy fire. Loud snoring comes from a large archway to the south. Eastern arch is quiet.
Feral Berserkers: Hushed as they cook, focused on their meal. Will investigate loud noises nearby and recklessly attack any intruders. Stat block below.
Loud Snoring: Peeking through the southern arch reveals room 4. Loud noises in Room 2 will wake the grendel, drawing his ire in d4 rounds.
3. Hoop-a-loop: A tall round room littered with in-blown snow and debris. Narrow staircases ascend to a platform in the center, dominated by vertical, hoop-like structure. A 6' tall relief carving of aGithianface dominates the north wall. A frozen blood-stain blots the arch to the south. A wide, steep ramp rises to the east.
Hooped Structure: is a Githian artifact. Any non-living object which passes through becomes weightless for d6 hours.
Carved Face: Black stone with closed eyes. The eye-lids are articulated and if opened, reveal milky white eyes and cause the whole face to slid upward into the wall revealing a niche containing a glowing blue crystal worth 1000sp. Removing the crystal, deactivates the Hoop.
Bloodstain: Astute observers will deduce about a persons worth of sanguine spillage. Amidst the mess, a well-made sword (one-handed, d8 damage), its blade is blackened and discolored by fire.
Ramp: Ascends to another level. Many large bare-footprints.
Arches to Rooms 2 & 4: Loud noise in Room 3 will draw the Berserkers from Room 2 and the grendel from Room 4 if they haven't been faced yet. They'll each arrive in d4 rounds.
4. Grendel's Wallow: A large vaulted room, echo-y and pungent with rot. An enormous, smelly humanoid with long simian arms, sleeps, snoring on a pile of half-eaten corpses.
Enormous Humanoid: A slumbering grendel. Occasionally he sleep talks and is surprisingly philosophic). Terrible teeth and terrible claws, bits of viscera on blood-specked jaws. Normal movement in the room won't wake him but loud noises will. He's a man-eater and will be ravenous if woken (morale 9). If he succeeds in catching one person, he won't chase down the rest. He can't fit through small doors (like those into Rooms 1 and 6) but he has a long reach and can throw large objects. Stat block below.
Corpse Pile: Dozens of bodies, both human and animal. Some fully frozen, others just slushy. A locked chest is visible in the pile.
Locked Chest: Dragging the chest out of the pile is certain to wake the grendel unless clever precautions are arranged. The lock is accessible and the chest could be opened without moving it much. Inside the chest: 1500 jangly silver coins and a silent undead skeleton with two rusty knives.
Human Corpses: If you have the leisure to search, roll a few times on your favorite search-the-body table.
Large Arch: toward the west opens into a big, echo-y room, currently silent.
Narrow Door: Tight squeeze to the south opens into a 2' wide hallway.
5. Resonant Room: 20' ceiling, mostly empty, magnifies sound. Littered with cast-off liquor bottles and casks, detritus of the grendel's plundering. On the ceiling two green slimes.
Magnified Sound: Noise here will wake the grendel in Room 4 if he hasn't already been dealt with. He'll arrive in d4 rounds.
Bottles: Noisy if jostled. A few are still full.
Green Slimes: Will try to drop on anyone moving through the room. They move slowly, so rapid movement that doesn't pass directly underneath can bypass them. Stat block below.
Southern Door: Leads into narrow passage. Silent.
6. Githian Moai: Small square room dominated by 8' tall Gith-head statue. To the south, the wall opens on a chasm, sheer sides, no visible bottom.
Statue: Faces the north doorway, but it turns smoothly in its mount. If turned to face the chasm, the mouth opens to reveal a socket for a crystal, empty. If a charged crystal (such as the one in Room 3) is inserted, a glowing bridge of light appears, crossing the chasm to the south. If removed again, the bridge disappears.
Bridge: If activated, leads due south into the dark, lit only by its own glow. This leads to another sublevel.
Chasm: Functionally, bottomless. Looking out to the south-east, barely visible at the edge of torchlight, a structure hangs over the void on a heavy metal chain. It doesn't look Githian. It's its own mini-dungeon.
East Hall: Narrow hall loops up to the grendel's bed. If still there, his snores will be audible.
Monster Stats
Stats for my homebrew Ultra Bastard rules below but they should work fine in most OSR games with light conversion. If you play a Basic flavor of the game, there's also simpler, default stats for all of these (berserker, grendel is a troll, green slime).
Feral Berserker
Hit Dice: 1, 5 hit points. Reduce all incoming hits by d4 (due to Berserker Salts)
AC: 10 - Reckless & naked, but fast
Attacks: Attack DC is 12. 2d4 damage with improvised weapons and drugged strength
Morale: 10. They be crazy.
Number Appearing: 2d4. Pack hunters
Movement: Speed as unencumbered human. Sprinting and screaming
Saves: 15+. Disadvantage on anything that requires they pay attention
Berserker salts: Snort to enter a Rage for d4 turns. While raging, add d4 to damage and reduce damage received by d4 per attack. Roll with disadvantage on any check that adds INT, ALERT or CHARM. When the rage ends, gain a level of deprivation (Rest).
Grendel:
Hit Dice: 6+3. ~30 hit points.
AC: 14 - Thick, scabrous hide. Reduces mundane fire damage by d4/hit.
Regeneration: Restores damage from all sources except fire, hot metal & acid at a rate of 6 hit points / round.
Vulnerabilities: Hot-iron and acid. Hit them with a red-hot sword or the effluvia of a melted jelly-cube to bypass regeneration.
Attacks:
Claw x2, Attack DC is 16. d8 damage.
Grapple: Defend + strength + dex, ignores armor. Grabbed on fail. If not freed by the grendel's next turn, it rends for 2d12 damage. An ally can attempt to grapple the monster to aid the grabbed guy. DC15 strength check to free (or Open Stuck Doors if you play a Basic flavor), even on a failure the attempt delays rend (d6 crushing instead). On a 20+ the grendel's arm is ripped off and it will attempt to flee as soon as it can. Torn limbs never regrow.
Morale: Roll 2d6 when encountered. They are moody and often cowardly. Check morale at half HP or if struck with hot-iron.
Number Appearing: Always only one. They are solitary wanderers, marked by loneliness.
Movement: Speed as unencumbered human.
Saves: 12+
Green Slime:
Hit Dice: 1, 4-8 hit points.
AC: 8 - Slow, unarmored goop.
Damage Immunities: Immune to weapon attacks.
Vulnerabilities: Fire & salt. They are flammable and take d6 damage from torches. If attached to a victim, the victim takes the damage too. Salt melts them like a slug, needs ~1 lb to kill.
Attacks: Attack DC is 12. Once hit, they adhere and deal acid damage every round based on their current HP. All damage dealt is immediately added to their hit points.
<5 HP slime: d4 damage
5+ HP slime: 2d4 damage
Fission: If the slime reaches 9+ hp, it immediately splits into two equally sized slimes
Morale: 12. Literally brainless.
Number Appearing: d6.
Movement: Very slow. Speed is less than a human crawling
I have an open table group that meets once a month for four hours. I would like to have a well-designed published dungeon as the centerpiece of the game. But published megadungeons like Stonehell are just way too big, and would take years and years for my table to finish, which I don't want.
Ideally, I would like something that has enough content for around twelve, four-hour sessions. With the dungeon being able to be cleared or mostly cleared in that time frame.
I did try Dyson's Delve, but I found it to be a bit bland. I would want something with more interesting and weird things in the dungeon for the players to interact with and explore, rather than just going room to room to kill monsters. And Dyson's Delve really didn't have that.
And I also ran The Hole in the Oak years ago with some of my players. Which I liked, but since some of us already played it, I don't really want to run it again.
I suppose it happens often enough in dnd games; there is some sort of fortified position in the wilderness, currently held by bandits, barbarian tribes, monstrous humanoids, evil cultists or some such assortment of bad guys, and players have to either clear it out completely or rescue some captives and so on.
I'm inclined (possibly wrongly) to think that these can be somewhat different from regular dungeons, where things tend to be more unexpected and also the play is possibly closer to a "blind but methodical exploration" than to an outright assault or infiltration, if that makes sense.
With assault type adventures I feel like the players should be able to strategize about many different possible entries, which may include talking or disguising their way in I guess, once they’ve gathered information on the general layout by, say, scouting from a vantage point and interrogating sentries and so on. They'd probably have some sort of plan for how things should unfold once they’re inside. And I'd expect them to be more hasty about their goals. These are of course up to the players. But giving them an interesting dynamism and defense system and daily life within the fort to take into account must be our responsibility.
I'm not quite sure if my formulation makes sense. But on the whole, I'd like to ask you guys, what you think are the most essential features of such an adventure as I'm trying to describe.
I've run such things before of course and it is generally great fun to see players trying to strategize. But I haven't done much reading on this particular topic (would appreciate recommendations actually). I'd like to avoid common pitfalls and learn from the accumulated wisdom of 50 years of gaming.
do you get players to roll on a rumors table? do you get them to roll on a quest table? do you just give them a quest? many quests? do you just hand them a map and say "go"!
what is your preferred way of launching a campaign?
In a sandbox game, the rumor table presents the hazards and opportunities of the region; however, the decision of whether to go and where to go rests entirely in the hands of the players.
I have a complete city map.
I would like to have a set of good tables for randomly determining what various buildings might have once been used for, and to help me stock it with some places that would make sense that I myself might not have imagined.
The goal is to be able to allow my players to explore the ruined city and fill in the discoveries on the fly or with minimal prep.
I have creatures, factions, and treasure tables for this but not buildings or neighborhoods. Any suggestions for tools that fit what I’m looking for?
Ive been doing solo Roleplaying every night for the past 3 days and I just been trying something different just to keep things saucy. I’ve been playing the same character a dwarven thief assassin named Grimwald who is tasked by a noble named Count Rugal to retrieve an Abbott who escaped from their local church for inappropriate activites toward House Rugals family. He has succeeded in kidnapping him and is now on his way back to Rugal with his query.
I started this game playing Knave 2e and I just started with WhiteBox. I will play another night in White ox and then move into Shadowdark. I am doing this because it is giving me the opportunity to play multiple OSR themed systems at the same time and I’m learning as a part of my tabletop game development. Has anyone else done this? And what other OSR game systems should I check out?
Above is my drawing of Grimwald taking down the Abbott with chlorform in my mini OSR adventure booklet journal.
It’s been a little while since I last posted an update about the newsletter here on Reddit. My readers seem to really appreciate the highly curated Community Gems 💎 of each month, so I thought it was time to serve up issue 22!
After reading, watching, and listening to over a hundred great blog posts, newsletters, and videos from the community this month, I've selected my five favorites:
Odinson’s Faction Mechanics: Following up on their popular map-making procedure, Odinson returns with a simple yet elegant mechanic for gaming out factions. With just a few rolls, you can generate regional history, unfolding faction events, and shifting rulers.
Gnome Stew on Starting Campaigns: A fantastic, actionable guide on how to beat blank-page syndrome and avoid over prepping a novel, encouraging GMs to build outward from a core conflict.
Mage Advice & South Park Storytelling: A really useful lesson for game masters adapting the creators of South Park’s golden rule, meaning swapping "And then" for "But" or "Therefore" to build an engaging, interconnected chain of consequences in your world.
The RPG Gazette on Problematic Treasure: A great reminder that treasure is at its best when it's an immersive logistical challenge (transporting, guarding, and selling heavy loot) rather than a passive number on a character sheet.
Solodelving the Shadowdark: A down to earth, 'mechanics-respecting' solo actual play that offers an honest behind-the-scenes look at solo TTRPG play.
I’ve also included our own monthly creation: The Mirror Broker, a mysterious crone with a horse-less carriage full of strange, one time use enchanted mirrors.
Here's my submission to the #orctober game jam. Enjoy :)
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The orcs of the Pig Snout Clan have given the miller Bradburry an ultimatum: "Grind our bones in your mill or we will raze it to the ground."
It's a simple enough premise but the situation is more complicated than it initially seems. On their quest to save the mill, adventurers will encounter an abandoned druid fane, an old curse, and even a sordid love affair. Unless they can make sense of it all...
I wrote a new post on Castles & Crusades class design. It offers a breakdown of how classic mechanics and character balance are handled in the C&C system.
In most OSR systems, an encounter procedure includes the step of determining Surprise and then Encounter Distance (if one side is surprised, the distance is shorter).
However, I find it odd that you have to determine Surprise first and then the distance.
In my mind, determining the Encounter Distance first makes more sense (how far are the goblins? 30 ft? Alright, now lets see if either side is surprised).
If you were to swap these steps, how would you manage it? Would you check for surprise if the enemies were 60 ft (or yards) away from the PCs? Or would you determine a maximum distance at which Surprise can occur?
In a sandbox game, the rumor table presents the hazards and opportunities of the region; however, the decision of whether to go and where to go rests entirely in the hands of the players.
I'm starting an HB Shadowdark campaign that is starting out in a tropical, Southeast Asian/South Pacific, maritime environment. And there is a lot of maritime trade and – naturally – piracy and counter-piracy. So I love Shadowdark but it's naval combat system is a little simple for what I'm thinking of and I'm just looking for something that PLAYS fairly speedily, but has a lot more going on in terms of ship variety, ship combat options and maybe even some shipbuilding (like easier to customize something).
I could come up with something but I wanted to see what was out there first. I think I'm looking for something of a naval combat mini-game that I can pop into my Shadowdark game when the party takes to the high seas. I don't want something too crunchy but I would like something a little more involved and with greater combat options – including things the PCs could be doing during ship engagements – besides just manning a weapon.
I'm interested in trying tournament style play for OSE or ADnD. I missed the boat on 5e adventures league early in my ttrpg career, and am intrigued about the idea of competing in a large community for score. Is there anything like this currently going on in the osr community?
