OSE kinda sucks huh?
I get what the OSR/TSR movements want to do and their design philosophies, but you can keep those philosophies up while updating some bad design choices.
>THAC0
Objectively worse than progressive AC, since it's mathematically the same but less straightforward to calculate.
>Skills
Some of them have a d6 probability, others a percentile. Why? Why can't they just put them all in percentage?
>Races as class
Just stupid and awkward. You can reduce races to something as simple as ability caps or modifiers, or just a single racial feature (like "Dwarves can't have starting Dex above 12 or starting Con below 12. Dwarves can roll to recognize hidden architectural elements like trapdoors and sliding walls").
There's a lot of little thing that just seem holdouts from the old games for the sake of nostalgia. I get that nostalgia is the whole point, but if you want to sell an old game as a new product, you could at least update the elements that have proven faulty in hindsight.
The answer to all your questions is one: retrocompatibility with old modules/contents. Simple as.
Now fuck off and come back only when you have new materials. nagger.
>oh nooo I simply CAN'T run this dungeon if your rogue is an elf
If this is the level of 'retrocompatibility' you need, you may be too dumb to play games.
You're an imbecile. Retroclones (the things you're mad about) are just repronted and better formatted old rulesets, if you want to play old school stuff but with different rulesystems there's a plethora of games out there specifically designed for that (eg: knave).
You can't just be mad because the notion of understanding something scares and confuses you. Try being better Black.
>freakshitters want to freakshit
Thats your whole argument.
>oh nooo I simply CAN'T run this dungeon if your rogue is an elf
Not an issue with OD&D (using supplement I to add thieves), AD&D or any later edition. Only affects Holmes (which tells you to play the upcoming AD&D if you want elf thieves) as well as Moldvay/Mentzer Basic (which are the only editions with race-as-class) and derivatives.
OSE has optional rules for ascending AC and for separating race and class. Pretty sure there was a zine that standardized skill checks too
Isn't the whole point of that specific product not changing anything except presentation?
No, the whole point of that specific product is to make money off the back of someone else's ideas and hard work
>make money off the back of someone else's ideas and hard work
Welcome to economics.
>OSE kinda sucks huh?
Meh, never saw why should played it instead of bfrpg other than purism. Try ACKS, if you're looking for a modernized version that's expands on osr and keeps the fundamentals.
No one wants to play your shitty game, you fucking shill. Go shill your stupid Kickstarter on plebbit
OSE fags are truly insuferable, I don't even own the pdfs and just use the srd lol
let's play hole in the oak for the 14th time
Seethe tranny!
BFRPG and OSE are the same game, one is just formatted better for ease of reference in a physical tome (OSE). You aren't playing different games with them at all, the rules are identical.
Bfrpg has race as class and more importantly a proper encumbrance systrm
OSE has an encumbrance system as well and race as class is standard in it with the option to not use it as well.
Why are you arguing this? They are the SAME system.
I'll go one step further here.
There is one major determining factor as to which version you should use when it comes to Basic Fantasy and OSE.
Do you game with physical books? OSE.
Do you game with digital devices? Basic Fantasy.
BF is VERY focused on being a digital rulebook and reference source over a physical one. Links are all over the place and it is a damn good digital reference trove. The physical book? Total dog shit. It works, but it is not well laid out, structured, or even PHYSICAL put together well, but it is cheap as hell.
OSE is pretty much the gold standard for how a reference book (or booklets) should be made. Good physical construction, print size, layout, organization, reference tables, etc.
So if you game with little to no electronics at the table vs using electronics typically should be the MAIN deciding point on which reference source you use.
Ose doesn't list weights for equipment, so you can only have an abstracted encumbrance system.
OSE has ascending AC as well buddy.
And about your other points
I think you might just want to play something else.
But in general, OSE is a well organized version of B/X and It is pretty nice at that.
>well organized
It removes all the best examples and explanations from B/X. It also has conflicting rules in different 'editions'. Like the round order, for example.
Why use OSE when you can use B/X? They're not badly organized books, unless you're super autistic and too lazy to take very few notes about page numbers.
I cant disagree with your If you prefer the way B/X is organized. I like them as well, but i do think OSE does a pretty good job of organization, especially helpful for impromotu references.
And I agree, I really enjoy the examples of play, maps etc in B/X.
>especially helpful for impromotu references
Oh, I agree on that. It's just that I've seen different OSE products with some rules difference. Not different from B/X, but from other OSE versions. Like the order of rolls from random encounters and surprise attacks. Not sure they make that much of a difference in play though. Probably not enough to be noticeable by players unless the DM rolls everything in the open.
>DM rolls in the open
That should never happen. Hell, the players aren't even supposed to make their own skill checks. The DM does that.
>Why use OSE when you can use B/X?
I don't want to give money to wotc, and i dont' want the dand homosex lifestyle brand in my house, so I got BFRPG.
LotFP is more fun tho.
You are weird and off-putting.
VERY weird and off-putting...
VERY attractive.
Slavish adherence to old school rules is the whole point of retroclones. If you don't give a damn about compatibility, you can try some NuSR ruleset that claims to be spiritually equivalent or just port the things you want to use to your favorite system.
The only stuff that generally warrants porting are adventures and setting information, and the latter is generally system-agnostic.
B/X clones are particularly retarded because the Basic line is a failed attempt at making a retroclone of Original D&D by people who didn't understand Gygax' ramblings. So you're looking at two levels of bad cloning.
The litmus test of OSR is compatibility with TSR modules. Start changing multiples of those things, and you increase the GM's prep load in terms of conversion.
OSR isn't just a philosophy, it's also about a high degree of compatibility and interoperability with TSR modules.
I don't get the OSR crowd's obsession with modules, I swear it's 80% of what I hear about from them. Isn't a lighter, simpler system easier to prep for, since all you need is the dungeon's design?
Because the OSR was a revival of TSR D&D, before it was a philosophy. The litmus test is "how much do I have to change to run B2 or N1".
The modules are a benchmark. The other purpose is to exchange rules and systems with one another. If everything is meaningfully compatible with the modules they’re also compatible with one another. You made a neat custom class? A weird monster? You can share em with no problem. If your stuff couldn’t be dropped into Keep on the Borderlands or Village of Hommlet then it’s not gonna be very useful to the majority of OSR gamers because many of them are just running modified AD&D or B/X anyway.
Because modules are play aids, because the OSR is, or at least used to be about actually playing games, not having cool coffee table books with expensive art and 30% of their page count be fluff and in-universe fiction.
You aren't a good DM, so you think you can make good adventures without needing modules.
Modules are so heavily relied upon because all of OSR is built on false nostalgia. It's not enough to play le epic bacon true D&D unchanged since the moment it first spurted from Gygax's crusty braincock, you also must also run ancient shitty modules with recognizable names and long (mostly bullshit) legends attached to them. How can you prove you're a real gamer if you haven't played Fuckfest at Fraggle Mines using the BMX-yellowcrate system? Bro, have you even encountered The Sneef on layer 4 that steals your party's loot while they sleep and infects them with a random disease from Table XIV? Bro??????
>inb4 salty fakegrogs rush in to call me a tranny zoomer 5ecuck because their brain has been poisoned and they can't conceive of any other person disliking their sacred system.
you're a silly goose
Because gameplay (lit. "Playing Games") is more important than nitpicking details and complaining that things are too complex in game made for ten year olds
Anybody who gives a shit doesn't play D&D or D&D adjacents
>Races as class
This is really what keeps me from trying to play this with my players, I think most modern players really need some kind of "character creator".
OSE in particular is only meant to be a functional reprint of B/X. That’s why they’re keeping the old school stuff in.
I agree that ascending AC and race-and-classes being separate is overall superior. But I think various resolution mechanics is fine. Sometimes you don’t want that amount of granularity.
I'm perfectly fine with people admitting that OSE is just B/X being reprinted verbatim with better layout and worse art. That's a functional admission that the 'authors' are just hacks, abusing an open license to make money off a game from 50 years old without any significant change except in name.
(the cover art kinda rocks though)
It’s not “admitting” it, that’s literally the case. Go stick your cock in a blender.
>Admitting
At no point did it even pretend to be something else.
It is B/X with a better layout, clarified rules, and ease of reference. The guy who made it is a damn good editor, not really the author.
>less straightforward to calculate.
Did you fail out of elementary school to the point you can't do subtraction?
Alright, I understand that this may be a difficult concept to grasp for you so I'll break it down.
When a game is being played (actually played, not just thought about by nogames neckbeards), exchanges of actions and information happen between players and game master.
When resolving an attack with ascending AC, the exchange of information is pretty effective: the player will declare their attack, roll the die, add their modifier to the result, and declare the result, all in one go. Then the DM will immediately know whether that score beat the monster's AC or not, and declare the success or failure of the attack. This is how the exchange of information looks like:
>Player: I attack the orc! I roll an X total!
>GM: You hit! Roll damage.
It's pretty straightforward because the active side has all the information to calculate the final score as soon as the die lands (die result and modifier), and the other side has all the information to declare a state of success or failure as soon as that score is declared (the target number, or AC).
With THAC0, you always need one more step of exhange of information to resolve the action. The player will roll the die, and they will need the DM to provide information to modify the score, and only then they will be able to compare the final score to the target number.
The active side generates the first piece of information (die roll) and has the final one (target number, the THAC0), but he doesn't have the second piece of information (modifier, or AC) to connect the die roll to whether or not they met their target number. The DM, on the other hand, has the modifier, but doesn't have the target number. So either the GM needs to communicate AC in advance, or the player needs to declare their THAC0 along with their roll and leave the GM to do the calculations; either way, it's not as straightforward as the active party being able to tell the final score at a glance upon rolling.
>With THAC0, you always need one more step of exhange of information to resolve the action
Nta but no. Either you roll the die and check the matrix on your character sheet (picrel) or just do thAC0 minus the roll to get the AC hit. There's no significant difference with ascending bonuses to hit vs ascending ac.
>he can't read
Do you possess the divine gift to read the enemy's AC directly from your DM's mind, or do they have to tell you like to us common mortals? Because in the latter case, the point still remains that having the DM communicate the intermediate step of resolution instead of the outcome of the roll is less convenient.
see
see
but if you can't read, I'll repeat myself:
>I attack the orc, what's his AC?
>>3
>I hit
is sloppier than
>I attack the orc, does a 16 hit?
>>Yes
, not to mention that it involves the DM disclosing information that the players may then metagame around. Though I can see how this latter point may not sway any OSR fans, since metagaming seems to be part of their shitty philosophy.
How is it not metagaming to reveal that a 16 hits? The very first session of D&D I ever played, the players began operating on the information implied by whether or not this die roll versus that die roll hit. This also MADE THE GAME RUN FASTER so it's literally not even a problem. You're also adding a step that doesn't need to exist.
THERE IS A CHART YOU IMBECILE, ON YOUR SHEET. IT TELLS YOU WHAT DIE ROLLS WILL HIT WHAT AC.
>"I attack the orc, I hit AC 7"
>Nope, miss
>"I attack, hitting AC 5"
>Cool roll damage
You don't need the step of the DM explicitly telling them what the orc's AC is so the player can do the extra math. You're full of shit. You haven't even tried THAC0 or descending armor class in general. It's one thing to be judgmental of something when you're speaking from experience, but when you're uninformed and shooting from the hip the best thing you can do is just shut the fuck up.
Are you mongoloid? here's how it goes
>Roll and check the matrix
>"I hit AC 3 or greater and do 16 damages"
Or
>Roll and subtract result from thAC0
>"I hit AC 3 or greater and do 16 damages"
The actual answer to how THAC0 works in play is that the DM knows everyone's THAC0 and the player just tells them the raw value of the dice.
Calculations only need to be done once for each PC/Monster AC combination instead of adding a number to a d20 every time.
And you technically can avoid doing math at all with the matrix if you'd prefer.
>the DM knows everyone's THAC0
>instead of adding a number to a d20 every time.
If a DM can memorize the THAC0 of eight PCs and their henchmen, the DM can also memorize everyone's attack bonus using ascending math.
Under THAC0 not played by a homosexual
>Player: I attack the orc! I roll enough to hit AC 5.
>GM: You hit! Roll Damage.
I never said a monster AC to a player, never had to take fucking notes or memorize player THAC0. Just put the numbers on the sheet and LOOK then TELL and it's DONE.
Plenty of older retroclones did the "classic vibe with updated rules".
Monolithic archetypes are good, especially for more casual games. Foregrounds the in-game action instead of the player choices that begin before they start play.
Extended character options should be unlockable content unless you have significant player buy-in from the start.
The compatibility argument is shaky to me, have these people not ran the same module with B/X characters, then with AD&D ones? The latter has a much more generous character generation which will have a bigger impact in the game than if you have THACO, ascending AC or decide to express the thief skills in %.
Similarly going from OD&D to AD&D with all the editions in-between you're gonna run into a lot of small changes, supplements, optional rules and vague rules that are gonna have a significant impact in how the same module is run.
Whether or not it makes the game or module easier isn’t the question, the question is how many changes need to be made. If you use a single saving throw system, that’s easier to work with than if you import 3.pf’s fort/reflex/will saves considering the monsters don’t have ability scores. That’s just one example.
It's a spectrum. But you need some grounding or else the "Dungeon World is OSR" guys show up. First and foremost, it's about preserving TSR D&D.
>THAC0
Unironically the best idiot filter to keep Critters and other flavors of 5e babbies off your table. If subtraction is a point of contention even with a handy chart on their character sheet, you're better off without them.
>Skills
d6 percentages are roughly 16-17% per side, just so your know.
>Race as Class
Basic D&D's classes were broad archetypes. Every fighter is a fighter, every elf is an elf. If your vision of an elf differs from the fighter/mage hybrid presented, too bad I guess. A better criticism could be levied at the Advanced OSE book with the classes it adds since these seem to narrow the scope of the broad archetypes. Yes, I know it has race + class rules as well. Humans being the race with the classes hearkens back to a concept Gary Gygax used in OD&D where the ages of demi-humans have passed and they are now in decline but humans are set to inherit the world if they can overcome monsters.
>There's a lot of little thing that just seem holdouts from the old games for the sake of nostalgia
5e also has these. The PHB does not define what alignments* are and waffles so much about what a paladin is that it doesn't actually define the class beyond "Warrior with magic" and just dumps the concept of paladin oaths on you.
*Gygax didn't define them well either and every edition has done a worse and worse job of explaining them
>d6 percentages are roughly 16-17% per side, just so your know.
Yeah that's the point you humongous cunt, why have different skills have arbitrarily separate resolution mechanics with different dice and different difficulty formats when you could just have everything be a percentage roll?
Do you lack even the ability to read and extrapolate information from a short post?
's a lot of little thing that just seem holdouts from the old games for the sake of nostalgia
>5e also has these.
Where in this goddamn thread has anyone mentioned 5e as a point of comparison? 5e being garbage is an unrelated topic to OSE being a worthless product.
I don't know what's wrong with you DNDrones, but I personally tend to compare the quality of games to the broader scene of TTRPGs, not just to the current edition of WOTC shitgarbage.
>*Gygax didn't define them well either and every edition has done a worse and worse job of explaining them
Open up the DMG* and be enlightened.
*BX / OD&D definitions do not count as valid examples of bad design since they were either for kids or were merely a test run for how the game was always meant to be played, AD&D
>merely a test run for how the game was always meant to be played
quality bait fren
Does AD&D not cover all of the usual complaints and fixes the issues?
>Muh race-as-class / where elf thief?
Literal non-issue as the elf F/M-U plays identical to the race as class and Multiclasses get to a reasonable level in AD&D. Half-Orc doesn't count since they are a meme race anyway
>but muh dwarf wizard
Not in Tolkien, fuck off
>why x in 6 and d% skills
The DM handles 90% of these rolls anyway. If you don't like it, don't referee
>to-hit and AC
Non-issue. There are multiple methods, they all have the exact same thought processes in different order. Grogs grew up with descending, so that's what a RETRO system is meant to have. Don't like it, homebrew / convert it.
>meta gaming
The game is already punishing enough. A good DM is able to adequately challenge any group of players of any given skill level AFTER READING AND COMPREHENDING THE DMG. A task most fail at, granted, but if it's too much for you leave it to your group's DM.
>but my DM is no superhuman / never completed a 9th grade education
If you were ready to play D&D like it is meant to be played, you would already be playing it and have fun. Either look for a new gaming group, indulge your current one by playing kiddie D&D (OSE) or change systems altogether. Dungeon World for example.
>LMAO have you seen them whacky psionics
Appendices are optional
>Unearthed Arcana
Published 10 years after AD&D it heralds the coming of 2e bloat and unshackles Demihumans' level limits. If you want to powergame, go UA. If you want the intended by Gygax D&D experience, stick with AD&D
>bloat? Uhm aktshually 1e has hundreds of pages
As does any sytem not aimed at children / beer&pretzels gamers.
tl;dr: if you do not have the mental faculties for Advanced D&D, don't play it.
THAC0 is easy as shit since the character sheet will have a chart showing you what AC you hit with each die roll. So you don't have to do any complicated math, you can just say "I hit AC 5" and since your target has AC 7, you hit em.
Done.
Anyone who sucks at THAC0 is in fact the nogame who is only thinking about how it would work and has never even attempted. This is coming from someone who prefers ascending armor class and always converts to it because I simply like bigger numbers.
>you can just say "I hit AC 5" and since your target has AC 7, you hit em.
That's unintuitive as fuck, far worse than "I rolled a 17" "Their AC is 15, so you hit".
OSR players are mentally stunted
Shut the fuck up, pot
We just used the THACO wheel, it has all the info on it, line it up, boom, done, takes five seconds.
>b-but I don't want to have to buy abloo bloo bloo
Shut up you poorfag you can literally make one yourself with a printer and some scrap cardboard and thumbtacks.
Thac0 is fine for people who aren't fucking morons. And race as class makes sense. It's just universalist homosexual types who either can't understand HBD or refuse to acknowledge it because it upends were all the same tripe they peddle.
If you say thac0 when you mean descending AC, it's clear you don't really know what you're talking about.
Did you just like, refuse to read the OSE advanced tome? Or did you refuse to read either of them, you nogames homosexual
>if you want to sell an old game as a new product
Problem found.
Old School Games already exist and remain available - even OD&D. Why buy the shittier reboots?
Racial levels are great but only in the context of free multiclassing. Having to choose between "being a dwarf" and "being a fighter" is kind of stupid. Racial levels should be used to emphasize the upper limits of a given race's physique as well as to represent elements of that race's core culture.