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Old 02-24-2021, 10:11 PM   #11
crazycaleb
 
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Kentucky
Default Re: Old School Renaissance?

Oh, wow! That looks awesome. I backed Tower of Scoundrels but kind of regret only getting the digital version and not the actual vinyl record, so this might be just the thing to fix that.
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Old 02-27-2021, 04:00 AM   #12
dbm
 
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Default Re: Old School Renaissance?

One of the high-points of OSR for me is Sine Nomine, a one-man company that puts out consistently high-class product. Their web site is about four years out of date, so better sources of info are his DriveThru catalogue and he uses Kickstarter for new projects. Kevin’s work is uniformly high quality and his Kickstarter campaigns are gold-standard for delivering and communication.

He has a number of different OSR products with different emphases. Stars Without Number is sci-if, Godbound is a take on the concepts of Exalted. Silent Legions is modern horror. Scarlet Heroes is a fantasy system designed to allow solo-PCs to take on OSR modules by themselves. He recently did Wolves of God which is a more grounded Dark Ages game.

His latest Kickstarter is Worlds Without Number, a fantasy game to support sandbox play. All his games feature GM tools to help generate gameable material. In that regard, his books are like GURPS books - useful whether you play the game or just as tools to support other games.
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Old 03-04-2021, 04:05 AM   #13
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Default Re: Old School Renaissance?

Another good thing about Sine Nomine - Kevin makes free versions of his products available so you can try them out before paying for the deluxe version. Typically the Deluxe will have some extra optional or detail subsystems but the free versions are playable for sure.

Here’s a link to the hot-off-the-digital-press Worlds Without Number.
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Old 03-20-2021, 03:01 PM   #14
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Originally Posted by dbm View Post
. . . Worlds Without Number . . .
So by different route, I came across this title - with the nagging feeling I'd heard of it before.

Decided to plop down money on the full version after looking over the free version for the last couple of days. It's that good. Rarely have I see a single work so densely packed with ideas. Even if you're not sold on the game system or setting (it's not bad, but I always like to make my own) the sheer volume of material contained in there is great if you're stuck for encounter ideas or an adventure session plot.

Then I remembered this thread and came here to recommend it as well.
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Old 03-25-2021, 05:55 AM   #15
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Default Re: Old School Renaissance?

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Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company View Post
That wiki page isn't a bad introduction. It's a movement of mostly older gamers which uses older--like, pre-AD&D--editions of D&D and similar very early RPGs as inspiration.
Most of the OSR crowd I've been seeing are NOT the old fogies like myself. They're usually 20-somethings and 30-somethings who think they know how things were done "Back in the day" based upon a few very vocal grognards recollections. Most of which look little like what I recall, but then again, despite the aim of the rules to be uniformity (AD&D 1E DMG introduction), it resulted in many different and incompatible playstyles.

Also, the base ruleset from which they modify is just about evenly split between Original D&D (axiomatically with sups 1 & 2), and Moldvay's Basic Set; OSRIC was by grogs for grogs and kicked off the OSR, but the OSR rapidly moved away from OSRIC as the dominant clone. A smaller set are based upon reducing OSRIC in specific ways.

One is a direct clone of the 4th edition of basic rules, the Cyclopedia, and it's Wrath of the Immortals supplement: Dark Dungeons.

I've not seen a specific Holmes clone nor BECMI clone, but BECMI is covered closely enough in Dark Dungeons.
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Old 03-25-2021, 07:05 AM   #16
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I've not seen a specific Holmes clone nor BECMI clone, but BECMI is covered closely enough in Dark Dungeons.
There's the Blueholme rules. Excuse me, "BLUEHOLME™," with a bunch of marketed variants. The author never, EVER writes the name without the trademark symbol.
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Old 03-25-2021, 10:53 AM   #17
Polydamas
 
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Default Re: Old School Renaissance?

Quote:
Originally Posted by ak_aramis View Post
Most of the OSR crowd I've been seeing are NOT the old fogies like myself. They're usually 20-somethings and 30-somethings who think they know how things were done "Back in the day" based upon a few very vocal grognards recollections. Most of which look little like what I recall, but then again, despite the aim of the rules to be uniformity (AD&D 1E DMG introduction), it resulted in many different and incompatible playstyles.
As someone who played a fair bit of 1e AD&D in the nineties and oughties, I third this message that the OSR's memories of early systems and the culture in them is often fanciful. I also don't understand the desire to publish umpteen slight variants on the basic engine, although that was definitely the culture before 3e AD&D (remember Skills and Powers?) Everyone had a 3 ring binder full of house rules! I'm just not sure that any rules can square the circle they want.
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Old 04-06-2021, 08:22 PM   #18
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As one who played OD&D in the late 70's, I don't miss the random character stat generation. Roll 3d6 six times, no stat higher then 11. Next person rolls same dice six times, no stat lower then 12. What I do miss is the feeling that the characters have some control over their lives. Many of the modern 1-20 adventure paths seem like poorly disguised movie scripts where most of the action is pre-determined. "After accepting the mission to rescue the prince, the PCs exit town to the north until scripted encounter 1. After defeating the encounter the PCs continue until scripted encounter 2. After defeating the encounter and finding the key, the PCs soon arrive at the dungeon.... ".

Most of the campaigns in the early days were ad-hoc short missions often punctuated with a run through a freshly purchased module perhaps with a session of wandering around the countryside using the random encounter tables. Often, the GM would let the players choose what the next adventure was going to be.

After our Pathfinder sessions were paused due to Covid, we started up a TFT game over Roll20. We have gained 2 players attracted by the relative simplicity of TFT ruleset and the GM running a non-scripted adventure.
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Old 04-06-2021, 10:06 PM   #19
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Originally Posted by DeadParrot View Post
As one who played OD&D in the late 70's, I don't miss the random character stat generation. Roll 3d6 six times, no stat higher then 11. Next person rolls same dice six times, no stat lower then 12.
Which, in OD&D, would have only minor effect on your character, especially if you weren't using the Greyhawk supplement. Ability scores were more about letting the DM judge what your character was capable of rather than mechanically determining outcomes.

In early D&D, superpowers weren't really central to the game. What do you do with the silver tree growing in the middle of the dungeon dripping silver drops from its leaves? Which of the three mystics sitting in the room will lead you to the correct door? How do you get this magic wand to work, and do you really want to spend a thousand gold pieces paying a sage to figure it out for you? This is what early D&D revolved around.
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Old 04-09-2021, 12:04 AM   #20
Polydamas
 
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At least in early D&D, characters are so quick to generate that if one is hopeless and dies, or gets bitten by something poisonous in Basic D&D and dies, creating a new one does not take very long.

Quote:
Originally Posted by DeadParrot View Post
What I do miss is the feeling that the characters have some control over their lives. Many of the modern 1-20 adventure paths seem like poorly disguised movie scripts where most of the action is pre-determined. "After accepting the mission to rescue the prince, the PCs exit town to the north until scripted encounter 1. After defeating the encounter the PCs continue until scripted encounter 2. After defeating the encounter and finding the key, the PCs soon arrive at the dungeon.... ".
That bothers me about Robin D. Laws' using Hollywood screenwriting to proscribe how to write games and adventures ... a film director controls everything you see and hear, a GM is lucky if he can get everyone in the same room within half an hour of start time!

That said, I have seen some CoC adventures like that ... I think railroading marks GMs who have not learned how to use more sophisticated ways of designing adventures. Stringing fight scenes between transition scenes is easy, whatever the system!
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