TheRPGSite

Here's the link:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dragonslayerrpg/dragonslayer-role-playing-game

I met Greg at North Texas RPG Con this year and he is truly a great designer, DM and a nice guy to boot. 

We have been playing in Barrowmaze and the Forbidden Caverns of Archaia for two years and constantly ran into issues using OSE Advanced not having the same spells and / or magic items as the modules. Its nice to see the hybrid game that we have been playing codified into a definite ruleset.

Quote
Once upon a time, as kids in the late 1970s and early 1980s, we played the first role-playing game created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.

There were options at the time. Some played Basic and some most moved to First Edition (as best they could).

Most of us kept using the Basic Engine (elegantly restated by Tom Moldvay in 1981) and grafted the chrome of First Edition into our existing style of play. We used First Edition spells, character classes, monsters, and all the adventures. We left behind lame rules that bogged down gameplay and made it feel like actuarial science (for example, counting segments for spells or weapon-speed factors, among others).

This wasn't Moldvay Basic and it wasn't First Edition.

This was the edition we all played. We called it .75 or halfway between BX and 1E.

This is the ruleset that I've played for decades. This is how I play medieval fantasy role-playing games. This is the way I want to play fantasy role-playing games.

This is the ruleset I used to create and play some of the most popular and evocative megadungeon adventures on the RPG market today:

Barrowmaze, Archaia, HighFell, and Dwarrowdeep.

Both Archaia (2017) and Dwarrowdeep (2022) won the Three Castles Award for Independent Dame Design in recent years.

This...is the DragonslayerTM Role-Playing Game.

DragonslayerTM is a 300 page rulebook with cover art by legendary ex-TSR artist Jeff Easley.

Greg sold me with "halfway between BX and 1E".  That's how we played back in the day.  I'll be backing this.

Backing without hesitation.

I'll be backing it as well.

I want it but not sure if i can fit it in my budget.

Backed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iZjp1dwrfk&ab_channel=GregGillespie

This is a good couple of days for kickstarter for me. First Larry Elmore's book and now this.

Now just eagerly awaiting Cities Without Number.

Here's a link to the teaser trailer

https://youtu.be/GNZkbb6zQmg?si=3M0rQSE9debgg92y (https://youtu.be/GNZkbb6zQmg?si=3M0rQSE9debgg92y)

Drivethru has a "quickstart" you can download for free. It's really more like an extended preview. The art looks excellent and consistant, which I really appreciate. I respect what Gillespie is doing here, but probably won't back it. I already have other OSR games that cover this same exact ground. Those also support ascending armor class which Dragonslayer probably doesn't (that's just a guess at this point).

If you are looking to get one or two of his megadungeons at discount, there is that option with the kickstarter bundles.

Sounds a lot like how we used to play. A sort of hybrid of basic and AD&D with the lame unnecessarily complicated rules tossed out.

I backed this immediately upon getting the notification.

God forbid he gets reviewed by Questing beast and this forum turns on him like they did Shadowdark like a pack of wolves on a wounded deer.

This is going to be cool! I hope to write some more modules!

Quote from: THE_Leopold on August 29, 2023, 09:55:27 AM


I backed this immediately upon getting the notification.

God forbid he gets reviewed by Questing beast and this forum turns on him like they did Shadowdark like a pack of wolves on a wounded deer.

Now that Greg has been "outed" by the woke mob, QB will likely avoid him like the plague even though he has positively reviewed Greg's stuff in the past. 

Quote from: Persimmon on August 29, 2023, 02:31:48 PM

Quote from: THE_Leopold on August 29, 2023, 09:55:27 AM


I backed this immediately upon getting the notification.

God forbid he gets reviewed by Questing beast and this forum turns on him like they did Shadowdark like a pack of wolves on a wounded deer.

Now that Greg has been "outed" by the woke mob, QB will likely avoid him like the plague even though he has positively reviewed Greg's stuff in the past.

Wait, is Greg actually a rational human being who isn't an NPC? Ok, I have to back this KS now.

Quote from: Thor's Nads on August 29, 2023, 02:56:12 PM

Wait, is Greg actually a rational human being who isn't an NPC? Ok, I have to back this KS now.

he made it a mission to go on TPB, declare he didn't do modern politics in his products, and was promptly banned from the site.

he is one of the folks on the GREEN list

Quote from: THE_Leopold on August 29, 2023, 03:27:18 PM

Quote from: Thor's Nads on August 29, 2023, 02:56:12 PM

Wait, is Greg actually a rational human being who isn't an NPC? Ok, I have to back this KS now.

he made it a mission to go on TPB, declare he didn't do modern politics in his products, and was promptly banned from the site.

he is one of the folks on the GREEN list

Wow. A true hero. I'm a fan. Are those threads still up? I'd love to read them.

Quote from: Thor's Nads on August 29, 2023, 02:56:12 PM

Quote from: Persimmon on August 29, 2023, 02:31:48 PM

Quote from: THE_Leopold on August 29, 2023, 09:55:27 AM


I backed this immediately upon getting the notification.

God forbid he gets reviewed by Questing beast and this forum turns on him like they did Shadowdark like a pack of wolves on a wounded deer.

Now that Greg has been "outed" by the woke mob, QB will likely avoid him like the plague even though he has positively reviewed Greg's stuff in the past.

Wait, is Greg actually a rational human being who isn't an NPC? Ok, I have to back this KS now.

That and the quality products put out by a fellow Canadian are enough for me to have supported him.

Quote from: Thor's Nads on August 29, 2023, 04:05:08 PM

Quote from: THE_Leopold on August 29, 2023, 03:27:18 PM

Quote from: Thor's Nads on August 29, 2023, 02:56:12 PM

Wait, is Greg actually a rational human being who isn't an NPC? Ok, I have to back this KS now.

he made it a mission to go on TPB, declare he didn't do modern politics in his products, and was promptly banned from the site.

he is one of the folks on the GREEN list

Wow. A true hero. I'm a fan. Are those threads still up? I'd love to read them.

I mean he does post here too so....

And what a shock... he's already funded.

Not to be confused with Crimson Dragon Slayer D20... incidentally, I just updated the (free) PDF on DTRPG.

Looks good, but if he thinks the druid is "hosed", he must be a BECMI guy.  The 1st edition druid is the most powerful class (sans the Bard and UA.)

Quote from: THE_Leopold on August 29, 2023, 03:27:18 PM
he made it a mission to go on TPB, declare he didn't do modern politics in his products, and was promptly banned from the site.

he is one of the folks on the GREEN list

Hehehe. Greg also trolled the sjdubs on r/osr. It was a fun read.

Can anyone explain what's different about this system, without referencing BECMI, B/X, etc?

Quote from: Thorn Drumheller on August 30, 2023, 04:56:51 PM

Quote from: THE_Leopold on August 29, 2023, 03:27:18 PM
he made it a mission to go on TPB, declare he didn't do modern politics in his products, and was promptly banned from the site.

he is one of the folks on the GREEN list

Hehehe. Greg also trolled the sjdubs on r/osr. It was a fun read.

Typical reddit discourse:

Redditor1:  Greg Gillespie is an Alt-Right Nazi!!

Greg Gillespie:  No, I'm not

Redditor1:  HELP!  GREG GILLESPIE IS TROLLING ME!  OMG, WHY ARE YOU BEING SUCH A TROLL?

;D

More non-woke gaming products like this are always nice to see.  And I looked through the quickstart preview, and I'm glad that Drow are not a playable race. I didn't like that they were included as such in Old School Essentials Advanced, along with the Duergar and Svirfneblin.

Just got off Tenkar's stream where they interviewed Greg.

It was a fabulous stream and I'm just hyped for this game.

And like others have said, do I need another system? Not in the slightest, but man I'm excited. Even just to support Greg.

Quote from: Tod13 on August 30, 2023, 05:28:10 PM
Can anyone explain what's different about this system, without referencing BECMI, B/X, etc?

It mentions B/X, but the KS has a good intro:

QuoteIn its simplest form, Dragonslayer mimics BX in gameplay. Moldvay Basic is a finely tuned machine. It's the best, most internally consistent edition ever created. However, Gary Gygax's siren song of First Edition still echoes in our heads and the races, classes, magic items, monsters, and spells, drip with texture and flavour for fantasy campaigns.

Having said that, Dragonslayer uses the engine of BX with the chrome of First Edition. What does that mean? It means the combat engine, casting, and initiative reflect the former, and the cool stuff reflects the latter. There were also issues with 1E that needed to be addressed. For example, dragons were too weak, demon and devil types were internally inconsistent, druids were hosed, the monk was non-western, thrown weapon bonuses/damage was never really addressed to satisfaction. There were lots of lame rules that needed to go like weapon-speed factors and counting segments. Just because a rule existed to keep Arneson from getting royalties doesn't make it a good rule.

At the end of the day, Dragonslayer presents like a honed version of 1E but with the firm commitment to the iterative elegance of Moldvay Basic.

Think of Dragonslayer as halfway between the two or .75

Quote from: Aglondir on August 30, 2023, 10:47:52 PM

Quote from: Tod13 on August 30, 2023, 05:28:10 PM
Can anyone explain what's different about this system, without referencing BECMI, B/X, etc?

It mentions B/X, but the KS has a good intro:

QuoteIn its simplest form, Dragonslayer mimics BX in gameplay. Moldvay Basic is a finely tuned machine. It's the best, most internally consistent edition ever created. However, Gary Gygax's siren song of First Edition still echoes in our heads and the races, classes, magic items, monsters, and spells, drip with texture and flavour for fantasy campaigns.

Having said that, Dragonslayer uses the engine of BX with the chrome of First Edition. What does that mean? It means the combat engine, casting, and initiative reflect the former, and the cool stuff reflects the latter. There were also issues with 1E that needed to be addressed. For example, dragons were too weak, demon and devil types were internally inconsistent, druids were hosed, the monk was non-western, thrown weapon bonuses/damage was never really addressed to satisfaction. There were lots of lame rules that needed to go like weapon-speed factors and counting segments. Just because a rule existed to keep Arneson from getting royalties doesn't make it a good rule.

At the end of the day, Dragonslayer presents like a honed version of 1E but with the firm commitment to the iterative elegance of Moldvay Basic.

Think of Dragonslayer as halfway between the two or .75

Thanks. But that's exactly what I don't understand. It uses BX rules for X, Y, and Z, and 1E for everything else. Except the stuff he changed.

I have a garbage memory. I like the OSR community (mostly LOL) but play Traveller or our non-OSR homebrew. I hang out here and the related MeWe and Discord groups. And the some Traveller Discords server.

But, I don't remember the differences between BX and 1E. Hence, my original question. (I give similar feedback to authors who say their books are like A, B, and C. Often, I don't know A, haven't read B, and hated C.)

(Watching RPGPundit review non-OSR games is interesting. He's very honest about his preferences. I guess having him review your game at all is still good marketing.)

Yes, I am.

Avowedly anti-woke.

I really appreciate the sentiments and positivity here.

Thank you so much.

I cannot wait to throw more money at Mr. Gillespie.

-seriously; man makes good shit and should be rewarded/acknowledged

QuoteThanks. But that's exactly what I don't understand. It uses BX rules for X, Y, and Z, and 1E for everything else. Except the stuff he changed.

I have a garbage memory. I like the OSR community (mostly LOL) but play Traveller or our non-OSR homebrew. I hang out here and the related MeWe and Discord groups. And the some Traveller Discords server.

But, I don't remember the differences between BX and 1E. Hence, my original question. (I give similar feedback to authors who say their books are like A, B, and C. Often, I don't know A, haven't read B, and hated C.)

There are many differences between B/X and 1E. 

My perspective comes from this point of view:

• I DM one group that uses OSE Advanced, playing in Greg's Forbidden Caverns of Archaia megadungeon. (18 months, averaging 4th level)
  
• I play in another OSE Advanced game as a player, running through Barrowmaze. (over 2 years averaging 6th-7th level)

During play, these are the differences that we have noticed, usually where OSE Advanced bumps up against the lack of 1E rules.

1. Spells: B/X spell lists are very terse, and utililirarian. Spells are meant for combat or interacting with the dungeon environment. 1E has a much larger array of spells, many of which are used by NPCs in Greg's megadungeons.
2. Hit Dice: B/X was only around for a small group of modules. Everything produced afterwards was either for BECMI or AD&D, and this assumed higher hit dice per level for both PCs and NPCs. B/X characters agasinst AD&D NPCs are at a hit point disadvantage.
3. Combat/Initiative: B/X uses a much simpler side based initiative that makes combat smooth and faster.  AD&D had a much more complex segmented initiative system that almost no one used back in the day, they just ran AD&D but used the B/X initiative system.
4. Magic Items: B/X had fewer magic items, bounded with lower bonuses. OSE Advanced imported many of these items, but they were, in many cases,  nerfed to fit into the OSE/B/X rules.  Greg's megadungeons, and other 1E based modules assume that you have the 1E versions of thes items.
5. Layout/Design: From what I've seen of the art and layout its superior to AD&D (that's not too hard considering what they had to work with back then), but also superior to OSE Advanced. In fact, it appears that he takes a pape out of Jeffrey Talanian's Hyperborea 3rd Edition in regards to layout and presentation. In fact, the preview page that I saw for the Thief shows that you can just about make your whole character right there on the two page class spread. Saving throws, starting equipment, to hit matrix, attack bonus.. all included right there for you.

OSE Advanced Sample

Sword +1, Frost Brand
Grants special benefits against fire and creatures with an affinity for fire.
▶ In extreme cold, casts light: 30' radius.
▶ Grants an attack bonus: +3 against fire-using or fire-dwelling creatures.
▶ Can extinguish fire: 50% chance of extinguishing a 10' radius area when thrust into fire. This also affects magical fire (but not instantaneous effects).
▶ Protects against fire: The wielder gains the following benefits:
e. Normal fire: Unharmed by non-magical fire.
f. Save bonus: Gain a +2 bonus to all saving throws versus fire-based magical or breath attacks. g. Fire-based damage: Is reduced by 1 point per damage die rolled. (Each die inflicts a minimum of 1
hit point damage.)

AD&D Sample

Sword +3, Frost Brand, +6 vs. firsusing/dwelling creatures
bestows the +6 bonus in a self-explanatory manner. The weapon does not shed any light, except when the air temperature is below 0" F, but it does give special benefits against fire, for its wielder is protected os if he or she were wearing a ring of fire resistance and whenever it is thrust into fires it has a 50% chance of extinguishing them in a 10' radius - including a wall of fire but excluding a fireball, meteor swarm, or flame strike.

As you can see, there is quite a disparity in the power level of these items. Using the OSE Advanced versions of these items in a 1E based adventure, puts you at a disadvantage.

There are numerous levels of subtle differences between the editions, and it looks like Gillespie is leaning into the power levels of AD&D, but merging it with the simplicity of B/X(OSE).

I'll see if I can remember any more differences. 

Quote from: TheShadowSpawn on August 31, 2023, 05:33:06 PM

QuoteThanks. But that's exactly what I don't understand. It uses BX rules for X, Y, and Z, and 1E for everything else. Except the stuff he changed.

I have a garbage memory. I like the OSR community (mostly LOL) but play Traveller or our non-OSR homebrew. I hang out here and the related MeWe and Discord groups. And the some Traveller Discords server.

But, I don't remember the differences between BX and 1E. Hence, my original question. (I give similar feedback to authors who say their books are like A, B, and C. Often, I don't know A, haven't read B, and hated C.)

There are many differences between B/X and 1E. 

My perspective comes from this point of view:

<huge snip>

There are numerous levels of subtle differences between the editions, and it looks like Gillespie is leaning into the power levels of AD&D, but merging it with the simplicity of B/X(OSE).

I'll see if I can remember any more differences.

Wow! Thanks. That's actually pretty helpful - especially when you refer to how Greg uses the rule variants.

Hm. Mildly interested. Is this going to be a FOMO Kickstarter deal, or are they going to actual retail?

Quote from: TheShadowSpawn on August 31, 2023, 05:33:06 PM
3. Combat/Initiative: B/X uses a much simpler side based initiative that makes combat smooth and faster.  AD&D had a much more complex segmented initiative system that almost no one used back in the day, they just ran AD&D but used the B/X initiative system.

We used individual initiative for PCs and batch initiative for NPCs. Was a workable middle ground. I do like to have weapon speed/casting time factor into initiative, and avoid the alpha strike of having one side go and wipe out the other side before they can react.
5 Parsecs has a similar system where you roll to see if you go before or after the opponents.

I haven't backed a kickstarter in over a decade. I think my last one was Golden Sky Stories. Got burned by a few too many. (Where's my fucking game, Skarka?).

That said, this sounds right up my alley. Backed. Until someone makes my private, secret dirty dream of game (A fully fleshed out and cleaned up AD&D2E retroclone), this seems great for me.

Quote from: Bruwulf on September 01, 2023, 10:08:58 AM
I haven't backed a kickstarter in over a decade. I think my last one was Golden Sky Stories. Got burned by a few too many. (Where's my fucking game, Skarka?).

That said, this sounds right up my alley. Backed. Until someone makes my private, secret dirty dream of game (A fully fleshed out and cleaned up AD&D2E retroclone), this seems great for me.

For Gold & Glory isn't good enough to check your boxes?

Quote from: Jam The MF on September 02, 2023, 02:59:26 AM
For Gold & Glory isn't good enough to check your boxes?

Not really. It's better than nothing, don't get me wrong! I like what he did, and I certainly enjoy it, but it's  not quite what I dream of.

But no denegation to Justen Brown! I applaud him for being the only one to even take a swing at doing a proper retroclone of the the most maligned edition of the pre-d20 era.

Quote from: Bruwulf on September 02, 2023, 08:52:05 AM

Quote from: Jam The MF on September 02, 2023, 02:59:26 AM
For Gold & Glory isn't good enough to check your boxes?

Not really. It's better than nothing, don't get me wrong! I like what he did, and I certainly enjoy it, but it's  not quite what I dream of.

But no denegation to Justen Brown! I applaud him for being the only one to even take a swing at doing a proper retroclone of the the most maligned edition of the pre-d20 era.

In fairness,it's maligned for a lot of very valid reasons.  That being said, it's the last edition worthy of the D&D moniker.  Everything after TSR folded is DINO.

Looks like Dragonslayer has been issued a C&D order from Danial Proctor of Labyrinth Lord.

IMO, retrocloning 2nd Edition has always been a challenge for several reasons:

• It's the most diffuse and decentralized version of the game ever produced, with numerous options, modular rules sets, and variations.
• Its appeal is very much tied up with the settings and other material that's harder to reproduce with SRD modifications than many of the other editions.
• It suffers from 'middle child syndrome', being despised by much of the Old School (especially the Gygaxolators) and the 3E crowd. :)
• Much of what the game seemed to want to do is actually better served by systems much farther removed from AD&D than even 2nd Edition at its most daring got to be, so fans of its distinctive flavor are likely to migrate outside the D&D space altogether, let alone the OSR.

Quote from: jeff37923 on September 05, 2023, 08:53:24 PM
Looks like Dragonslayer has been issued a C&D order from Danial Proctor of Labyrinth Lord.

Well that seems... vague.

It's absurd and nonsensical, which is why I made it public.

Quote from: Gegilles on September 05, 2023, 10:16:22 PM
It's absurd and nonsensical, which is why I made it public.

Can somebody TLDW this for me?  What possible basis could Proctor have for a C&D.  And will you honor it?

I'm curious as to how it will handle the difference in power level, especially for fighters.

1e has much better attack progressions for fighters (basically +1 per level, vs +2 every 3 levels for B/X). 1e has different weapon damage for large creatures (1d12 for a long sword vs a large creature instead of just 1d8), exceptional strength for fighters and multiple attacks per round, plus if using UA, weapon specialization.

In B/X, Clerics fight almost as well as fighters (at 9th level, for instance, they have the same THAC0), plus the whole spells thing.

Quote from: Gegilles on September 05, 2023, 10:16:22 PM
It's absurd and nonsensical, which is why I made it public.

The letter makes it sound like you are copy pasting LL text and releasing it CC. Do you have any idea why he thinks this? Or is Dan Proctor having some kind of mental health crisis? I know he has had issues.

My overall impression of you two is that you are pretty abrasive* while he always seemed like a nice guy, but recent years seem to have been hard on him.

My politics are much closer to yours ofc, like most posters here. 😄

If I needed another reason to dislike Dan Proctor, this is it.

There two copies of the 290 page manuscript.

I have one and the person who helps me with layout.

Notice the total lack of citations???

This is Dan pearl-clutching.

Nothing more.

Quote from: S'mon on September 06, 2023, 05:10:30 AM

Quote from: Gegilles on September 05, 2023, 10:16:22 PM
It's absurd and nonsensical, which is why I made it public.

The letter makes it sound like you are copy pasting LL text and releasing it CC. Do you have any idea why he thinks this? Or is Dan Proctor having some kind of mental health crisis? I know he has had issues.

My overall impression of you two is that you are pretty abrasive* while he always seemed like a nice guy, but recent years seem to have been hard on him.

My politics are much closer to yours ofc, like most posters here. 😄

Quote from: Gegilles on September 06, 2023, 08:27:01 AM
There two copies of the 290 page manuscript.

I have one and the person who helps me with layout.

Notice the total lack of citations???

This is Dan pearl-clutching.

Nothing more.

Did you, or are you, planning on responding formally or ignoring the letter?  Seems this is not Dans first c&d.   Id love to stop this behavior from spreading.

Is Dan thinking that if someone uses OGL work and uses the CC license instead dan is losing rights to IP?

I guess he thinks that way.

He was probably fishing.

Dan doesn't have a copy and cant make this claim.

This all came about in the last week when he gave up trying to make Woke LL and went back to plan A. My Ks dropped concurrent to that development and its success spurred the letter.

No, I dont respond to letters that arent based in reality.

Well this is certainly an exciting development...if someone else is getting some success, sue them! Dan Proctor seems to have gone full retard.

Quote from: Gegilles on September 06, 2023, 08:44:56 AM
I guess he thinks that way.

He was probably fishing.

Dan doesn't have a copy and cant make this claim.

This all came about in the last week when he gave up trying to make Woke LL and went back to plan A. My Ks dropped concurrent to that development and its success spurred the letter.

No, I dont respond to letters that arent based in reality.

I saw some of his initial efforts for a 2nd edition of LL, and it didn't suit me at all. I have the original LL which I use as a resource, and I had some interest in seeing what the 2nd edition would be like. After my initial view of LL 2E I dropped all interest. I hadn't heard he was rethinking his approach. Was this announced somewhere?

There's a thread at Dragonsfoot on this same topic; those interested might find some more insight there.

Quote from: I on September 06, 2023, 11:56:11 AM
There's a thread at Dragonsfoot on this same topic; those interested might find some more insight there.

Found the link here:
https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=91583

Seems that GG was a licensee for LL back in the day,
Goblinoid Games, make of Labyrinth Lord (Dan) went under,
GG offered to help in some way, shit went south quickly,
Now GG made his own game system and Dan seems to think that his rules are in the book that GG is about to publish because GG was going to take over LL when it was about to be deader than a door nail.


That seems to be the gist of the drama.

Quote from: Brad on September 06, 2023, 09:47:53 AM
Well this is certainly an exciting development...if someone else is getting some success, sue them! Dan Proctor seems to have gone full retard.

While I tend to think Greg is being a bit of a jerk in publicising this, yes I think Dan has had some kind of mental health breakdown.

Quote from: S'mon on September 06, 2023, 01:18:15 PMWhile I tend to think Greg is being a bit of a jerk in publicising this, yes I think Dan has had some kind of mental health breakdown.

Whether or not it's baseless, it's potentially impactful to his Kickstarter, at least theoretically. I don't really feel he has an ethical choice other than to make it public.

Your right to privacy ends when legal threats begin. At least insomuch as the legal threats themself are concerned. Obviously I don't mean dig up dirt on people for fun.

Quote from: Bruwulf on September 06, 2023, 01:22:28 PM

Quote from: S'mon on September 06, 2023, 01:18:15 PMWhile I tend to think Greg is being a bit of a jerk in publicising this, yes I think Dan has had some kind of mental health breakdown.

Whether or not it's baseless, it's potentially impactful to his Kickstarter, at least theoretically. I don't really feel he has an ethical choice other than to make it public.

Your right to privacy ends when legal threats begin. At least insomuch as the legal threats themself are concerned. Obviously I don't mean dig up dirt on people for fun.

But publicising it seems likely to hurt the Kickstarter most.

DP's claims seem utterly baseless. If I were GG I might well have publicised the attack too. I too am an Aspy sometimes obnoxious academic with a high view of himself.  ;D

Quote from: S'mon on September 06, 2023, 01:36:58 PMBut publicising it seems likely to hurt the Kickstarter most.

That's what I mean about an ethical responsibility to publicize it. I didn't say it was good for business. Essentially the C&D notice constitutes a risk that backers and potential backers should be aware of. Even if it's baseless and unlikely to go anywhere, they still deserve to know.

The C&D does not affect my backing if the project. I support Greg and all of his projects.

I used to love LL and ran it exclusive until I got a bunch of copies of BX for my table and extras for the shelf. Then Dan went all SJW for his announcement of what he wanted to do with his 2e of LL. I donated all my copies to the library. No room on my limited shelf and even more limited game time for woke companies.

I can't wait to see this Kickstarter fulfilled and likely take over as my main game of choice.

Quote from: wmarshal on September 06, 2023, 11:41:59 AM

Quote from: Gegilles on September 06, 2023, 08:44:56 AM
I guess he thinks that way.

He was probably fishing.

Dan doesn't have a copy and cant make this claim.

This all came about in the last week when he gave up trying to make Woke LL and went back to plan A. My Ks dropped concurrent to that development and its success spurred the letter.

No, I dont respond to letters that arent based in reality.

I saw some of his initial efforts for a 2nd edition of LL, and it didn't suit me at all. I have the original LL which I use as a resource, and I had some interest in seeing what the 2nd edition would be like. After my initial view of LL 2E I dropped all interest. I hadn't heard he was rethinking his approach. Was this announced somewhere?

Yeah, I was also mildly interested in a second edition of LL, but it didn't look great from the initial previews and when he went full woke in the wake of the OGL fiasco, it became utter trash.  Last I saw, which was several months ago, there were still fanboys on Facebook praising Dan's efforts at the woke edition, but I guess additional feedback caused that to flame out.

Now I do recall Dan referring to Advanced LL as .75 edition at some point and I know Greg does the same for his game.  That seems like a pretty flimsy reason for a C&D (as is the presence of a cyclops race), but Dan seems like a pretty insecure and fragile guy based on his own statements.  My feeling is that most of these games aren't that different from each other anyhow and lots of people buy multiple games for different reasons, including preferences over things like layout & art.  Perhaps the market is near saturation, but so long as KS's are getting funded and people are still making their versions of the game that others are willing to buy, who cares?  Getting litigious seems pretty lame.

I can respect your position, but due diligence was done before I made the decision.

Also, nobody, and I mean NOBODY, is going to shoot across my bow without return fire.

Quote from: S'mon on September 06, 2023, 01:18:15 PM

Quote from: Brad on September 06, 2023, 09:47:53 AM
Well this is certainly an exciting development...if someone else is getting some success, sue them! Dan Proctor seems to have gone full retard.

While I tend to think Greg is being a bit of a jerk in publicising this, yes I think Dan has had some kind of mental health breakdown.

Quote from: Gegilles on September 06, 2023, 02:19:09 PM
I can respect your position, but due diligence was done before I made the decision.

Also, nobody, and I mean NOBODY, is going to shoot across my bow without return fire.

Yes, like I said, honestly if I were you I'd likely have done the same. Although I lecture in copyright so maybe I'd have tried to find out what he thought his case was first.

The key item to remember in all this: I didn't start it.

I have been (very) quietly working away for two years now without a peep.

Not one.

It's best not to poke an owlbear.

Quote from: Gegilles on September 06, 2023, 04:40:17 PM
The key item to remember in all this: I didn't start it.

I have been (very) quietly working away for two years now without a peep.

Not one.

It's best not to poke an owlbear.

I like this attitude.

And I like that the attributes are in The Right Order. Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma.

It's the smallest damned thing, utterly inconsequential to actual gameplay - but damn it, details make the difference between a game played and a game forgotten.

Quote from: Thornhammer on September 06, 2023, 10:23:11 PM

Quote from: Gegilles on September 06, 2023, 04:40:17 PM
The key item to remember in all this: I didn't start it.

I have been (very) quietly working away for two years now without a peep.

Not one.

It's best not to poke an owlbear.

I like this attitude.

And I like that the attributes are in The Right Order. Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma.

It's the smallest damned thing, utterly inconsequential to actual gameplay - but damn it, details make the difference between a game played and a game forgotten.

As a curiosity, I think the Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma order makes sense as a "yin yang" of sorts.

A low Strength character can only be a Magic-User, while a low Intelligence character can only be a Fighter; a low Dexterity character can only be a Cleric, and for low Wisdom, a thief.

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2016/07/old-school-d-and-yin-yang-method-of.html

They have to be in the correct order and it matters 100%.

Quote from: Thornhammer on September 06, 2023, 10:23:11 PM

Quote from: Gegilles on September 06, 2023, 04:40:17 PM
The key item to remember in all this: I didn't start it.

I have been (very) quietly working away for two years now without a peep.

Not one.

It's best not to poke an owlbear.

I like this attitude.

And I like that the attributes are in The Right Order. Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma.

It's the smallest damned thing, utterly inconsequential to actual gameplay - but damn it, details make the difference between a game played and a game forgotten.

Quote from: Gegilles on September 07, 2023, 10:29:42 AM
They have to be in the correct order and it matters 100%.

Quote from: Thornhammer on September 06, 2023, 10:23:11 PMAnd I like that the attributes are in The Right Order. Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma.

Okay, I've seen a fair amount of stupid come from discussion of this KS, but this has to be one of the stupidest.

How precisely does one determine the "correct" order, and why the fuck would this actually matter?

I will very happily disagree with you lol

Almost all the original modules used the same order for ability scores.

If you paid attention, it was quite consistent for a fair few years.

So YES it matters :)

Quote from: Steve Dubya on September 09, 2023, 11:22:11 AM

Quote from: Gegilles on September 07, 2023, 10:29:42 AM
They have to be in the correct order and it matters 100%.

Quote from: Thornhammer on September 06, 2023, 10:23:11 PMAnd I like that the attributes are in The Right Order. Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma.

Okay, I've seen a fair amount of stupid come from discussion of this KS, but this has to be one of the stupidest.

How precisely does one determine the "correct" order, and why the fuck would this actually matter?

Quote from: Steve Dubya on September 09, 2023, 11:22:11 AM

Quote from: Gegilles on September 07, 2023, 10:29:42 AM
They have to be in the correct order and it matters 100%.

Quote from: Thornhammer on September 06, 2023, 10:23:11 PMAnd I like that the attributes are in The Right Order. Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma.

Okay, I've seen a fair amount of stupid come from discussion of this KS, but this has to be one of the stupidest.

How precisely does one determine the "correct" order, and why the fuck would this actually matter?

Have you ever seen Fiddler on the Roof?

Quote from: Steve Dubya on September 09, 2023, 11:22:11 AM

Quote from: Gegilles on September 07, 2023, 10:29:42 AM
They have to be in the correct order and it matters 100%.

Quote from: Thornhammer on September 06, 2023, 10:23:11 PMAnd I like that the attributes are in The Right Order. Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma.

Okay, I've seen a fair amount of stupid come from discussion of this KS, but this has to be one of the stupidest.

How precisely does one determine the "correct" order, and why the fuck would this actually matter?

This is one of those "Tell us you're ignorant without telling us you're ignorant" posts.

Quote from: Gegilles on September 09, 2023, 12:16:23 PM
I will very happily disagree with you lol

Almost all the original modules used the same order for ability scores.

If you paid attention, it was quite consistent for a fair few years.

So YES it matters :)

Quote from: Steve Dubya on September 09, 2023, 11:22:11 AM

Quote from: Gegilles on September 07, 2023, 10:29:42 AM
They have to be in the correct order and it matters 100%.

Quote from: Thornhammer on September 06, 2023, 10:23:11 PMAnd I like that the attributes are in The Right Order. Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma.

Okay, I've seen a fair amount of stupid come from discussion of this KS, but this has to be one of the stupidest.

How precisely does one determine the "correct" order, and why the fuck would this actually matter?

Speaking of things that matter in conveying the old school vibe and inspiring people to play, I know you've said a lot about layout, images and presentation style.  That has certainly impacted OSE's popularity (and I know you're not a fan of its art style in particular).  I'd also point to the recent re-packaging of Swords & Wizardry as an example of functional, but generally uninspiring, design & presentation. While I love it's streamlined take on OD&D, S&W has always suffered from uneven art and inconsistent layout and presentation.  I was hoping those would be improved in this new edition, but that's not really the case.  I'll admit that I've had the pdf for months but didn't look at it much because I prefer to wait for the hard copy.  And, apparently because Matt wanted to get everything into around 160 pages, there's very little art and most of what's there is pretty pedestrian.  And the spell & monster descriptions, while nice and short, are really crammed together and not easy on the eyes.  The paucity of illustrations accentuates this issue.  Of course the game itself remains good and this is fine as a DM resource, but it's not the kind of thing likely to pull new players in.  Maybe Matt Finch doesn't care about that.

So are you going to post more spreads on the KS page or in live streams?  Particularly sample monster stat blocks & descriptions, spell descriptions and maybe a random table or two?

I agree with your assessment. I am a big Matt Finch fan. I enjoy his sense of humour and our discussions at cons. I enjoyed his modules too. Very creative and clever.

I suppose it all comes down to taste. I want to be inspired by my game books and, as you know, I'm not shy about spending money to ensure presentation value and longevity of the things I create. I want this rulebook to be the spiritual ancestor of 80s D&D and I'm going to ensure it happens. Can I make everybody happy? No. But I'm going to do my best and stretch my boundaries.

But yes, I think you have a firm grasp of things.

Dr. Gillespie,

Thank you for tanking the time to answer questions here about your Dragonslayer RPG. My question is this in regards to the megadungeons: are all of the megadungeons a part of the same game world? I do have Barrowmaze and it's fantastic, and if they are part of a larger game world, I definitely will consider supporting the Kickstarter.

blackstone,

I am not Dr. Gillespie, but I can answer as I've been playing in Barrowmaze, Highfell and Forbidden Caverns of Archaia. They are indeed part of the same game world, using the old Outdoor Survival boardgame map as the setting.

Greg has mentioned that at some point in the future he is going to do a Kickstarter for an excellent map of the setting along with a gazeteer that compiles all of the information that is spread across the different dungeons.

Here is a preview of the map preview  https://tinyurl.com/bp6mz7fs (https://tinyurl.com/bp6mz7fs) that Greg posted.

Quote from: TheShadowSpawn on September 11, 2023, 02:11:20 PM
blackstone,

I am not Dr. Gillespie, but I can answer as I've been playing in Barrowmaze, Highfell and Forbidden Caverns of Archaia. They are indeed part of the same game world, using the old Outdoor Survival boardgame map as the setting.

Greg has mentioned that at some point in the future he is going to do a Kickstarter for an excellent map of the setting along with a gazeteer that compiles all of the information that is spread across the different dungeons.

Here is a preview of the map preview  https://tinyurl.com/bp6mz7fs (https://tinyurl.com/bp6mz7fs) that Greg posted.

Cool. Good to know.

Yes that's true. All the regions in the megadungeons are connected to each other.

You can join the Barrowmaze fb group for details, if you like.

The map is a glorious full colour 34x34 inch masterpiece. There will be an accompanying gazetteer.

Den Beauvais has already completed the colour cover for megadungeon 5 (of 6).

Things are cooking and Dragonslayer will be at the heart of it all :)

Quote from: Gegilles on September 11, 2023, 07:21:50 PM


Den Beauvais has already completed the colour cover for megadungeon 5 (of 6).

Wait there's more? I need to make room on my bookshelf for them. Can you give us a preview of what's to come? Will they be using the new Dragonslayer rules?

Everything I do (have done) is fully integrated.

After Dragonslayer, I have the aforementioned map/gazetteer in a a year and a half.

Two years after that will be Project 5 and a couple years after that the last in the six megadungeon series.

Quote from: Gegilles on August 28, 2023, 10:37:25 PM
Here's a link to the teaser trailer

https://youtu.be/GNZkbb6zQmg?si=3M0rQSE9debgg92y (https://youtu.be/GNZkbb6zQmg?si=3M0rQSE9debgg92y)

After watching this and reading the free QuickStart file, I've pledged. I'll be honest with you, I've never read your stuff before now. But you've gained a convert, sir. I like your style. Best of fortunes, looking forward to the final product.

Quote from: Gegilles on September 12, 2023, 03:15:07 PM
Everything I do (have done) is fully integrated.

After Dragonslayer, I have the aforementioned map/gazetteer in a a year and a half.

Two years after that will be Project 5 and a couple years after that the last in the six megadungeon series.

Do you already know what themes your last two megadungeons will cover? So far you've covered:
Undead guarding a massive set of tombs.
Humanoids of many types infesting a series of cave complexes.
Gonzo wizard towers abandoned by their original owners.
An underground dwarf city by Duergar and their allies. (Not quite an underdark setting, but very, very close to it.)

Quote from: wmarshal on September 15, 2023, 09:04:15 AM

Quote from: Gegilles on September 12, 2023, 03:15:07 PM
Everything I do (have done) is fully integrated.

After Dragonslayer, I have the aforementioned map/gazetteer in a a year and a half.

Two years after that will be Project 5 and a couple years after that the last in the six megadungeon series.

Do you already know what themes your last two megadungeons will cover? So far you've covered:
Undead guarding a massive set of tombs.
Humanoids of many types infesting a series of cave complexes.
Gonzo wizard towers abandoned by their original owners.
An underground dwarf city by Duergar and their allies. (Not quite an underdark setting, but very, very close to it.)

Also, so far your megadungeons have been created with a "zero to hero" progression. Would these last two megadungeons follow that same pattern? I feel like the setting you're developing could use a megadungeon that assumed a higher starting level.

Yes all the projects were outlined and I already know where they'll go. I couldn't do the poster map without that knowledge. It's my game world/region.

No I have no desire to start at higher level because all my megadungeons accommodate higher level play.

I'm not changing the model this late into the game (pun intended).

Say your interview on Diversity and Dragons and...
Well, I'm sold! I will be pledging this weekend. Probably the Dragonslayer rules and mega-dungeon bundle.
Can't wait to this come to fruition.

Thank you!

Double D is a great guy!

Just a friendly reminder that the Dragonslayer kickstarter is down to just four days remaining...

I hope to earn your support in glorious anti-wokeness.

http://kck.st/3Z9kk5r (http://kck.st/3Z9kk5r)

I'd probably back the KS if you weren't Canadian.

That's being held against me? Lol

I'm also a British citizen, any better? Lol

Quote from: Gegilles on September 25, 2023, 09:02:08 PM
Just a friendly reminder that the Dragonslayer kickstarter is down to just four days remaining...

I hope to earn your support in glorious anti-wokeness.

http://kck.st/3Z9kk5r (http://kck.st/3Z9kk5r)

You have good sir. You have.

Quote from: Gegilles on September 26, 2023, 08:31:07 AM
That's being held against me? Lol

I'm also a British citizen, any better? Lol

Just say you're Scottish to make it the triumvirate of colonial hate.

Serious question though: how long after the KS ends before the finished PDF shows up? I ask because if it's "soon" I'm good with doing PDF-only.

I gave myself until March as per the KS.

Scottish, damn right!

Quote from: Gegilles on September 26, 2023, 04:51:00 PM
I gave myself until March as per the KS.

Scottish, damn right!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2q0T7QXETs

Fair enough, in for 35 of your "Canadian dollars", sir.

Thank you for your support.

You won't be disappointed.

Did the $155 pledge earlier this week.  8)

Thank you for your suppprt.

I'm hopeful to submit for the first print proof by the first week of October.

Quote from: Gegilles on September 26, 2023, 05:51:10 PM
Thank you for your suppprt.

I'm hopeful to submit for the first print proof by the first week of October.

Well it's money well spent. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but I was part of a 1st Ed AD&D podcast called Roll for Initiative. Vince, Matt, and I (DM Nick) did a pretty good run for ten years. Please check it out sometime. All of the episodes are archived at http://rfipodcast.com/show/ (http://rfipodcast.com/show/). Would love to chat with you sometime in the future over a beer or two.

I did not need another OSR game, as we get by with what we have. However, I wanted to check out Dragonslayer based on Gillespie's rep.

This is the first D&D-style OSR game that has excited, even inspired, me! The art, font, and layouts convey the style without detracting from the content or usability. And the freaking player advice? Read Art of War, keep the dice out of the GM's hands, and generally play smart instead of playing a game of "Mother, May I?" between your character sheet and the GM.

The icing on the cake for me was the Metal AF patches.

From what I can see, and from what I know of Gillespie's other products, this is going to be a helluva playable - and heavily played - game. Once I get the full product, no need to merely get by. My gaming table is gonna rock with the thunder of some new gods.

Gee, I really appreciate the positive vibes!

I'm committed to doing everything within my means to nail this bad boy.

I have lots of DM advice in the appendices that make it clear how lethal the game is and how to play Ad&d style, with art that reinforces the themes.

Dragonslayer is my love letter to the game and the community that holds it down, as intended by Gary Gygax. That includes the Western Eurocentrism and Christianity that is core to the game's DNA (and that everybody else is trying to get rid of).

Quote from: Chesterfield King on September 27, 2023, 01:14:24 PM
I did not need another OSR game, as we get by with what we have. However, I wanted to check out Dragonslayer based on Gillespie's rep.

This is the first D&D-style OSR game that has excited, even inspired, me! The art, font, and layouts convey the style without detracting from the content or usability. And the freaking player advice? Read Art of War, keep the dice out of the GM's hands, and generally play smart instead of playing a game of "Mother, May I?" between your character sheet and the GM.

The icing on the cake for me was the Metal AF patches.

From what I can see, and from what I know of Gillespie's other products, this is going to be a helluva playable - and heavily played - game. Once I get the full product, no need to merely get by. My gaming table is gonna rock with the thunder of some new gods.

Quote from: Gegilles on September 27, 2023, 02:01:35 PM
Dragonslayer is my love letter to the game and the community that holds it down, as intended by Gary Gygax. That includes the Western Eurocentrism and Christianity that is core to the game's DNA (and that everybody else is trying to get rid of).

   I'm not an Old School player (I started with 2nd Edition), but this has me intrigued. Are we back to Christian, or at least monotheistic, clerics and paladins?

All religious classes are, of course, based on Christian archetypes.

The deities you use in your campaign, are up to you.

This is the way.

I was on the fence about getting yet another game but damn this looks fun and I like the art and aesthetics. Backed!

Questing Beast is woke? What happened with Shadowdark?

Our group is playing OSE right now, I have a bunch of stuff for Swords & Wizardry as well as numerous other OSR PDFs (Basic Fantasy, Labyrinth Lord - before I knew how much of a PoS Proctor was, Shadowdark, etc.), so I really have no need for another B/X-derived or adjacent RPG.

But I backed it anyway :) In large part because of the reaction of the Leftists. They can't just ignore something they don't like, they have to actively try to sink it. Fucking evil.

You are bang-on about that.

Any successful conservative rpg designer (esp me) has to take a ton of shite.

Fascinating to me that these people who claim to be anti-hate, are exceptionally good at hating lmao

I can guarantee you, Dragonslayer will instantly become the coolest OSR ruleset immediately. The art is breath-taking.

Knee-bending is out :)

Did I need another OSR system? Nope.

That said, I'm sure this'll hit a high standard, so I have no problem dropping a few bucks for it.

I've increased my pledge to the rulebook/megadungeon bundle, still with patches.

Now comes the real work - deciding which megadungeon to get! I freaking love undead as monsters, so I'll probably go Barrowmaze. Whatever I choose, I am excited to have it hit the table.

Congratulations on how this Kickstarter is landing, Dr. Gillespie!

I appreciate the support fellas.

Even just taking a look means a lot.

Well, somebody in a group I belong posted about Dragonslayer, and as I kept reading about it, the more and more interested in it I became.
Then I funded it (with some pain, because my Real is such a weak coin, lol), and now we wait like everybody else.
Two things I would like to know: Playtests available? The second one may be silly, but, eh, whatever, will monks punch stuff?
Thanks.   ;D

Monks are western quarterstaff specialists

Same premise, maneuverability on the battlefield, but with a western flavour.

That's nice! But since they will be quarterstaff specialists (like the ones in Stronghold 2, lol), they will not be masters regarding to unarmed fighting, right? But since punching is a universal thing, will we have something like a cestus weapon?

Thanks!  ;D

Nobody can ever stop you from punching lol

But no, not hand-to-hand specialists.

Backed it in the last day. Looking forward to getting it. Dunno how much I will actually use the book since I'm not entirely sold on osr style play, but I'm sure I can find some interesting things to steal borrow for my games.

Well, thank you for your support and I hope you at least take a kick at the can (or two).

Cheers!

If interested, just the Dragonslayer FB group (the one with the red osr).

I'll post progress there.

I am, but I didn't find the FB group. Could you please share the link?
:)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/252471190687159

I don't add dodgy profiles or sockpuppets.

Well, my profile pic is a drawing of myself, so I believe there will be no problem. ;D

QuoteMonks are western quarterstaff specialists

Frankly if we go full Christian archetype I'd go with renaming it as Friar (since it were friar orders that replaced missionary bishops as wandering preachers associated with their walking sticks - not monks proper like Benedictines). Now of course monks proper also are generally not allowed to travel a lot. ;) But that's me and mine religious autism.

Quote from: Wrath of God on November 09, 2023, 11:52:37 AM

QuoteMonks are western quarterstaff specialists

Frankly if we go full Christian archetype I'd go with renaming it as Friar (since it were friar orders that replaced missionary bishops as wandering preachers associated with their walking sticks - not monks proper like Benedictines). Now of course monks proper also are generally not allowed to travel a lot. ;) But that's me and mine religious autism.

Is Friar Tuck an example of the archetype of a quarterstaff wielding priest that existed before the Robin Hood legend, or was he the original one?

QuoteIs Friar Tuck an example of the archetype of a quarterstaff wielding priest that existed before the Robin Hood legend, or was he the original one?

Friar with quatterstaff came from bishop staff. In early Church before friar orders were estabilished it was bishop's duty, specially selected ones, as direct apostles inheritors to venture into pagan lands to convert people. As perspective of pagans to convert rises, and also Church decided you need more extra help with existing Christians friars were estabilished. The quatterstaff is just used because they walk a lot (presumably bishop staff also came from this).

Monastic traditions on the other hand, are usually tied to monastery, semi-solitude (or in case of eremites like regular solitude), and constant prayer. Monk proper in Christian folklore gonna be rarely adventuring type, because while all original friars traveled a lot, most monks did not.

If we go with Christian theme for classes I'd do monk NPC class like sage, give them heftier divine powers so monastery is place PCs wanna reach when really badly battered but as I said disallow them adventuring. (And of course to fit this triad I'd rename cleric as templar, but that I guess would be really killing holy cow).

We played some of the new classes this weekend at Long-Con in Texas. I can say that the Monk class is indeed great.  We got to thumb through the book as well, layout and clarity was fantastic.

(https://scontent-mia3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/398577890_10161844894115400_1604510798521004195_n.jpg?stp=cp6_dst-jpg&_nc_cat=104&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=Glj_HU-cW5QAX-quiBc&_nc_ht=scontent-mia3-1.xx&oh=00_AfBekv0K9FbWCHsiesxHWDdVvdtwzbH4KM5U5E5aRm2R5g&oe=655782CA)

Dragonslayer Release Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o58Ao_Sjsos

As of now it looks like a few people from the Kickstarter are getting their download codes for Drivethru and more will follow after.

From the Kickstarter Page:

QuoteIt's Dragonslayer Day (D-Day)!

In the next few hours, I'll be sending the Dragonslayer codes. I'll start small, and then expand the delivery based on successful feedback.

Here's the first look at the Dragonslayer Release Trailer.

I hope you enjoy it. Please share across your networks.

Thank you for your support, Greg

Re: The Monk.

Unarmed combat techniques existed in the West for thousands of years.  As have warrior monks.

You can find the book on Drive Thru RPG now:

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/456030/dragonslayer-role-playing-game (https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/456030/dragonslayer-role-playing-game)

Good to see Greg bringing boobs back into the game in all their line drawn glory.  Now that takes me back to 1981 for sure.

Art in the trailer looked cool and the aforementioned halfway point between B/X and 1e sounds just right for how I like to play AD&D. Will need to look into this one.  ;D

No preview on DT-RPG?
Hope one is coming soon.

Just got this today and been looking through it. Looks like a great consolodation of oldschool d&d between two covers. A perfect starting point to run games out of. I like the codification of marching order and the simplified and clarified combat sequence. I'm probably going to mod in some more extensive encumbrance and weapon detail stuff, mostly lifted from NGR. Looking forward to running a 50th celebration one shot dungeoncrawl using this, probably built by the included dungeon generator.

I'm curious. Looks good. Lack of preview doesn't help. Will wait for some reviews.

Quote from: Persimmon on February 07, 2024, 07:06:52 PM
Good to see Greg bringing boobs back into the game in all their line drawn glory.  Now that takes me back to 1981 for sure.

"I once was lost, but now I'm found..." like a religious hymn to revelation, "Bring Boobs Back!," boobs showed him the way.  8) This is the Way.  :o Boobs are the way.  ;D

I'm impressed so far but I have barely had time to read much. I got into Combat and I am really enjoying the simplicity of those rules thus far.

 Sounds ideal for my group. I ran OSE Advanced and it was fine but I think my group wanted more complexity. However $30 is too much for any PDF when Basic Fantasy, C&C, and others offer either free or cheap PDFs. And frankly $80 for a black & white PoD hardcover with DTRPGs usual inconsistant quality is not endearing me towards purchasing this. Hell DCC is only £48 on Amazon. That's about what I'd expect for a hardcover book.

I have no need for another OSR game, probably about the only thing I'd buy right now is a 5e Basic D&D based game with some OSR stylings. If Gillespie published a separate art book I'd buy that though, the art he gets commissioned for this and for his megadungeons is absolutely fantastic.

If he brought out a book with all-new monsters I'd buy it. However, I don't need another book full of well-known spells and monsters, because I simply take them from AD&D.

Awesome game. I don't like the price of the hardback and pdf but honestly I do not like the cost of anything these days. My pay has not increased in years but the cost of almost everything has grown by 20%-50%. My collecting of rpg's is now canceled for anything I will not use at the table. I wish this had come out first and saved me the money I spent on OSE. It's much better.

I would rather have spent another $20 on the hardback and got something better than print on demand is my only critique so far.

Quote from: Rhymer88 on February 09, 2024, 06:07:20 AM
If he brought out a book with all-new monsters I'd buy it. However, I don't need another book full of well-known spells and monsters, because I simply take them from AD&D.

There is a monster book, though they're not all new.  Quite a few are; others are variants of classics.  It's called Megadungeon Monster Manual: https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/394352/Megadungeon-Monster-Manual

It's priced lower $32.99 for hardcover.  And in the tradition of the monster books of yore, you get the treasure type table at the back.  I quite like it, though I'd have preferred if he had included all these monsters in the Dragonslayer core book as well.  I suppose I can bind my pdfs into one big volume.

Quote from: King Tyranno on February 08, 2024, 11:15:12 PM
Sounds ideal for my group. I ran OSE Advanced and it was fine but I think my group wanted more complexity. However $30 is too much for any PDF when Basic Fantasy, C&C, and others offer either free or cheap PDFs. And frankly $80 for a black & white PoD hardcover with DTRPGs usual inconsistant quality is not endearing me towards purchasing this. Hell DCC is only £48 on Amazon. That's about what I'd expect for a hardcover book.

He's a college professor or something, so his idea of pricing books is at the higher end of "outrageous". I'm sure you can pay $80 for the book then sell it back to him for $10 when a new revision is announced, then he'll resell for $75 and say the new rev won't be out until next year sucka.

Quote from: S'mon on February 09, 2024, 04:10:52 AM
I have no need for another OSR game, probably about the only thing I'd buy right now is a 5e Basic D&D based game with some OSR stylings. If Gillespie published a separate art book I'd buy that though, the art he gets commissioned for this and for his megadungeons is absolutely fantastic.

I don't need another OSR game either, and hadn't planned on backing the Kickstarter until the Marxists lost their minds over it, so I decided to support the effort even if I wasn't going to play it (same reason I backed the ACKS Kickstarter).

That said, from my skimming of the PDF it looks pretty good; I need to do a more thorough read of it yet. The artwork is indeed quite nice as well. I also like how lots of it is a homage to 1E, from the "Paladin in Hell" to numerous monster illustrations.

Quote from: Brad on February 09, 2024, 10:30:33 AM

Quote from: King Tyranno on February 08, 2024, 11:15:12 PM
Sounds ideal for my group. I ran OSE Advanced and it was fine but I think my group wanted more complexity. However $30 is too much for any PDF when Basic Fantasy, C&C, and others offer either free or cheap PDFs. And frankly $80 for a black & white PoD hardcover with DTRPGs usual inconsistant quality is not endearing me towards purchasing this. Hell DCC is only £48 on Amazon. That's about what I'd expect for a hardcover book.

He's a college professor or something, so his idea of pricing books is at the higher end of "outrageous". I'm sure you can pay $80 for the book then sell it back to him for $10 when a new revision is announced, then he'll resell for $75 and say the new rev won't be out until next year sucka.

Not sure what goes into his personal pricing decisions (maybe it's the exchange rate or maybe he's trying to profit though he has said otherwise), but as a college professor I can attest that we have absolutely zero input into book pricing.  That is entirely at the discretion of the publisher. 

And as for the myth that professors are getting rich off selling their own books, that's pretty overblown too.  Unless it's a textbook put out by a trade press, we're seeing very little from sales.  And even some textbooks might just pay out a flat fee once and that's it.  If you're assigning an academic book you're likely making less than $100 a year in royalties.  And now, many universities screw everyone by "renting" used textbooks to students.  We see none of that income and the students are charged pretty much close to cover price for a book they use one semester and have to return to the school bookstore.  They hide this in the "fees" section of student tuition, etc.

Quote from: Brad on February 09, 2024, 10:30:33 AM
He's a college professor or something, so his idea of pricing books is at the higher end of "outrageous". I'm sure you can pay $80 for the book then sell it back to him for $10 when a new revision is announced, then he'll resell for $75 and say the new rev won't be out until next year sucka.

As a college professor, this made me laugh.  ;D And GG does have a rep for gouging his students. At least they get some nice art in their pay-to-pass PDFs.  :P

Quote from: Persimmon on February 09, 2024, 12:56:07 PM
Not sure what goes into his personal pricing decisions (maybe it's the exchange rate or maybe he's trying to profit though he has said otherwise), but as a college professor I can attest that we have absolutely zero input into book pricing.  That is entirely at the discretion of the publisher. 

And as for the myth that professors are getting rich off selling their own books, that's pretty overblown too.  Unless it's a textbook put out by a trade press, we're seeing very little from sales.  And even some textbooks might just pay out a flat fee once and that's it.  If you're assigning an academic book you're likely making less than $100 a year in royalties.  And now, many universities screw everyone by "renting" used textbooks to students.  We see none of that income and the students are charged pretty much close to cover price for a book they use one semester and have to return to the school bookstore.  They hide this in the "fees" section of student tuition, etc.

Obviously I was making a joke here...I remember when I was getting my masters in philosophy and my thesis chair asked me if I wanted to make some extra money over a summer and do some edits/ revisions to a textbook he was working on (Engineering Ethics). I think I edited a couple chapters, made literally peanuts for the amount of work I put in. He then told me how much money he was making for the work he put in, and also how much the publishers were charging the bookstores, and the bookstore markup. So yeah, professors make fucking nothing for textbooks relative to the end-cost.

But still, dude should know better. $30 for a PDF is ludicrous, IDGAF.

I agree that $30 for a pdf is high, though I've seen worse.  However, this is in line with e-books that are often just a couple bucks less than physical copies, which is also an absolute joke.  The rationale I've seen given is that they're assuming all these people are sharing pdf's or e-copies, hence they're charging more.  That may be true.  I'm so old fashioned I often decline the free pdf that comes with a printed title unless it comes with extras I want like custom character sheets.

Quote from: Persimmon on February 09, 2024, 08:46:33 PM
I agree that $30 for a pdf is high, though I've seen worse.  However, this is in line with e-books that are often just a couple bucks less than physical copies, which is also an absolute joke.  The rationale I've seen given is that they're assuming all these people are sharing pdf's or e-copies, hence they're charging more.  That may be true.  I'm so old fashioned I often decline the free pdf that comes with a printed title unless it comes with extras I want like custom character sheets.

I wonder if the market finds the right price point. For example, say I charge $30 for my PDF and no one is buying, I cut it to $15, and no one is buying. I cut it to $7.50 and the sales start pouring in. (If there are any Econ professors out there, please correct me if I've got this wrong.)

We have a few forum posters who sell PDFs (AMacris, Eric Diaz, Sine Nomine, etc.) How do you guys set your prices? Have you ever re-adjusted? Did it work?

Eagerly awaiting a real review of this...if Greg Gillespie would chime in and maybe send Pundit a copy for review, that'd be great. Perhaps he can offer a South American discount.

Quote from: Brad on February 10, 2024, 06:52:56 PM
Eagerly awaiting a real review of this...if Greg Gillespie would chime in and maybe send Pundit a copy for review, that'd be great. Perhaps he can offer a South American discount.

Here's an early one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXzUvkYJ4cQ

Quote from: Persimmon on February 10, 2024, 08:25:41 PM

Quote from: Brad on February 10, 2024, 06:52:56 PM
Eagerly awaiting a real review of this...if Greg Gillespie would chime in and maybe send Pundit a copy for review, that'd be great. Perhaps he can offer a South American discount.

Here's an early one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXzUvkYJ4cQ

So that's how you pronounce Symbaroum!

BTW, I just realized tonight that Greg had sent me my codes in a brief email exchange we had the other day.  So I'll offer a very preliminary hot take based on scrolling through the pdf a couple times.

Overall, I like it quite a bit.  Pretty much what we expected.  Very evocative art reminiscent of TSR ca. 1980.  Tight, two column layout.  I especially like the custom font he uses for headers. 

You get the following classes: cleric, druid, monk, fighter, ranger, paladin, barbarian, thief, assassin, magic-user, and illusionist.  There are the following races (not ancestries or some other PC term): human, halfling, dwarf, elf, half-elf, half-orc, gnome, and cyclopsman.  As in AD&D there are race & class limits imposed on demi-humans.  Humans advance to unlimited levels in any class.  There is multi-classing, though it's somewhat limited to the core 4 classes.  The various demi-humans all have racial abilities, ability score modifiers, and (usually) saving throw modifiers.  Armor class is descending (but see below).  For character generation of ability scores, you roll 3d6 seven times, discard the lowest result, and arrange to taste.  I rather like this method.  RAW, all PCs start with max HP at 1st level.  Most hit dice are standard AD&D, but interestingly, barbarians get d10 and rangers get d12.  Monks (more on this below) get d8.  Another very cool feature is that for each class the game offers 3 pre-generated equipment packs to choose from.  Other games have done this, and I like it, as it can speed up character creation even further.  Starting height, weight, and age for the various races, properly divided into male & female, are provided. There is a character sheet at the beginning of the book.

Overall, I like the little tweaks he makes to the classes.  For example, fighters (and paladins & rangers at higher levels can cleave): "If a fighter kills a target, s/he immediately receives 1 additional attack per two levels (one at Level 1, two at Level 3, three at Level 5, etc). Cleave applies to both melee and missile attack forms" (p. 24).  Barbarians get totem animals (for flavor, there's no mechanical benefit) and they can extend berserk rage if there are multiple barbarians in one party.  They can also be taunted into going berserk.  The biggest changes are with the monk, which I think should more properly be called a friar (and we'll do so in my campaign).  This is changed to be a Western monk and combines clerical abilities like turning the undead and casting spells with staff fighting, and abilities in lore, scholarship, and assorted holy things.  It's a very powerful class, but difficult to qualify for RAW, needing 12 in STR & INT, and 15 in WIS & DEX.  So, like paladins, in theory there won't be many monks running around in most campaigns.

Overall this section is good, but there are a couple things that REALLY bother me.  First, in the the section with the character classes, he only lists saving throws for first level.  The rest are buried in a chart near the back of the book.  There are other organizational issues as well, like the mechanical stuff towards at the end, even after description of magic items.  This is followed by procedural things about dungeon & wilderness adventuring, discussion of experience points, then various appendices and optional rules.  Also rather strange is that even though the game uses descending armor class, there are no attack matrices/tables.  Instead, there is the mini-chart on the character sheet and all classes get attack bonuses as in ascending AC systems.  Monsters are treated as fighters, but because he favors a slower power curve, it's not a simple hit dice equals attack bonus thing.  You have to know what a fighter's bonus is at that level.  Frankly, an attack table would be easier and we'll just pull out one of my other DM screens when playing.

Spell lists are pretty good; the new ones from Greg's megadungeons are in here, as well as some others we haven't seen before.  I get annoyed at the refusal or inability of most retroclone designers to expand the spell lists.  Paladins and rangers do get spells, which is a negative IMO, but that is in accordance with AD&D.

The monster section is fine; some good minor tweaks to classic monsters here and there, and I think it does a better job than the other similar clones like Labyrinth Lord & OSE Advanced in merging the B/X & AD&D monsters.  Great to see a more powerful sasquatch, must be the Canadian influence.  You get an image for pretty much every entry and the selection is pretty much like the AD&D Monster Manual.  Hilariously, the invisible stalker is literally an empty box.  And no shortage of topless nubile female monsters if that's your thing. I also like the nosferatu style vampire.  More exotic monsters & variants can be found in his Megadungeon Monster Manual.  One quirk is that the various giant sized normal animals are all in the "G" section so that's where you find Giant rats, toads, wolverines, etc., not under the exact species.

The treasure and magic items tables are quite good.  One innovation is the inclusion of magical runestones, with a fairly high chance (15%) of rolling them.  There are sub-tables for jewelry, gems, etc.  The magic items include lots of classics, plus a fair number of cool variants or original items from his mega-dungeons.  As noted above, there are very useful sections on dungeon & wilderness exploration.  He also includes lots of useful tables for randomly generating traps and even whole dungeons, with sub-tables for features, contents, and the like.  The Dungeon Generator Worksheet is fantastic and I'll be using it to help me fill out Dwarrowdeep.  There are similar, but less detailed, tables for hex crawls, and, of course, wandering monster tables.  The appendices include a funny, if at times, sarcastic FAQ on old school gaming, tips on playing for new gamers, carousing rules and table, a few more useful random tables and your certificate of death for PCs. 

All in all, a pretty good product at first glance.

Quote from: Persimmon on February 11, 2024, 12:29:07 AM
BTW, I just realized tonight that Greg had sent me my codes in a brief email exchange we had the other day.  So I'll offer a very preliminary hot take based on scrolling through the pdf a couple times.

Overall, I like it quite a bit.  Pretty much what we expected.  Very evocative art reminiscent of TSR ca. 1980.  Tight, two column layout.  I especially like the custom font he uses for headers. 

You get the following classes: cleric, druid, monk, fighter, ranger, paladin, barbarian, thief, assassin, magic-user, and illusionist.  There are the following races (not ancestries or some other PC term): human, halfling, dwarf, elf, half-elf, half-orc, gnome, and cyclopsman.  As in AD&D there are race & class limits imposed on demi-humans.  Humans advance to unlimited levels in any class.  There is multi-classing, though it's somewhat limited to the core 4 classes.  The various demi-humans all have racial abilities, ability score modifiers, and (usually) saving throw modifiers.  Armor class is descending (but see below).  For character generation of ability scores, you roll 3d6 seven times, discard the lowest result, and arrange to taste.  I rather like this method.  RAW, all PCs start with max HP at 1st level.  Most hit dice are standard AD&D, but interestingly, barbarians get d10 and rangers get d12.  Monks (more on this below) get d8.  Another very cool feature is that for each class the game offers 3 pre-generated equipment packs to choose from.  Other games have done this, and I like it, as it can speed up character creation even further.  Starting height, weight, and age for the various races, properly divided into male & female, are provided. There is a character sheet at the beginning of the book.

Overall, I like the little tweaks he makes to the classes.  For example, fighters (and paladins & rangers at higher levels can cleave): "If a fighter kills a target, s/he immediately receives 1 additional attack per two levels (one at Level 1, two at Level 3, three at Level 5, etc). Cleave applies to both melee and missile attack forms" (p. 24).  Barbarians get totem animals (for flavor, there's no mechanical benefit) and they can extend berserk rage if there are multiple barbarians in one party.  They can also be taunted into going berserk.  The biggest changes are with the monk, which I think should more properly be called a friar (and we'll do so in my campaign).  This is changed to be a Western monk and combines clerical abilities like turning the undead and casting spells with staff fighting, and abilities in lore, scholarship, and assorted holy things.  It's a very powerful class, but difficult to qualify for RAW, needing 12 in STR & INT, and 15 in WIS & DEX.  So, like paladins, in theory there won't be many monks running around in most campaigns.

Overall this section is good, but there are a couple things that REALLY bother me.  First, in the the section with the character classes, he only lists saving throws for first level.  The rest are buried in a chart near the back of the book.  There are other organizational issues as well, like the mechanical stuff towards at the end, even after description of magic items.  This is followed by procedural things about dungeon & wilderness adventuring, discussion of experience points, then various appendices and optional rules.  Also rather strange is that even though the game uses descending armor class, there are no attack matrices/tables.  Instead, there is the mini-chart on the character sheet and all classes get attack bonuses as in ascending AC systems.  Monsters are treated as fighters, but because he favors a slower power curve, it's not a simple hit dice equals attack bonus thing.  You have to know what a fighter's bonus is at that level.  Frankly, an attack table would be easier and we'll just pull out one of my other DM screens when playing.

Spell lists are pretty good; the new ones from Greg's megadungeons are in here, as well as some others we haven't seen before.  I get annoyed at the refusal or inability of most retroclone designers to expand the spell lists.  Paladins and rangers do get spells, which is a negative IMO, but that is in accordance with AD&D.

The monster section is fine; some good minor tweaks to classic monsters here and there, and I think it does a better job than the other similar clones like Labyrinth Lord & OSE Advanced in merging the B/X & AD&D monsters.  Great to see a more powerful sasquatch, must be the Canadian influence.  You get an image for pretty much every entry and the selection is pretty much like the AD&D Monster Manual.  Hilariously, the invisible stalker is literally an empty box.  And no shortage of topless nubile female monsters if that's your thing. I also like the nosferatu style vampire.  More exotic monsters & variants can be found in his Megadungeon Monster Manual.  One quirk is that the various giant sized normal animals are all in the "G" section so that's where you find Giant rats, toads, wolverines, etc., not under the exact species.

The treasure and magic items tables are quite good.  One innovation is the inclusion of magical runestones, with a fairly high chance (15%) of rolling them.  There are sub-tables for jewelry, gems, etc.  The magic items include lots of classics, plus a fair number of cool variants or original items from his mega-dungeons.  As noted above, there are very useful sections on dungeon & wilderness exploration.  He also includes lots of useful tables for randomly generating traps and even whole dungeons, with sub-tables for features, contents, and the like.  The Dungeon Generator Worksheet is fantastic and I'll be using it to help me fill out Dwarrowdeep.  There are similar, but less detailed, tables for hex crawls, and, of course, wandering monster tables.  The appendices include a funny, if at times, sarcastic FAQ on old school gaming, tips on playing for new gamers, carousing rules and table, a few more useful random tables and your certificate of death for PCs. 

All in all, a pretty good product at first glance.

I will have to agree with the positives Persimmon has noted on this review and thumbs up for the brief review.

The interesting thing about multiclassing, from what I have heard from Dr. Gillespie, is that it will allow many level-limited demihuman characters in a sense to explore all four basic classes. Obviously, Dwarves cannot be magic-users or illusionists. But say your dwarf survives up to hitting his level limit in Cleric, and you didn't multi class to begin with? Start taking Fighter levels. And an elf could theoretically eventually be a fighter/magic-user/cleric/thief even if they didn't start out classes as all of them originally.

I'll have to clarify with him at some point whether capping a class out first and then multiclassing into a different class would make you split your xp two ways or just earn as normal.

I'm not a huge fan of the megadungeon GM screens, as they don't contain enough information for me that's generic to the game system vs. specific to the Megadungeons they were created to support. I'd like to see one of those soon, if not just create one myself. And I've got a 3D printer project for a Dragonslayer time wheel I am working up. Other than that, I think just having the one core book will be great and I'm not a fan of digest so I'm good with the traditional size book that contains what I need to get launched. I'm looking to pick up the MMM in physical soonish.

On the PDF pricing? I am not really entirely in agreement with the folks who call it overpriced. A lot of companies start their pdf pricing at $24-29, so $30 isn't as terrible a stretch really. It's steep. But I think I'd as soon support the people like Dr. Gillespie who are making quality stuff I want to use as gripe about how much it costs to do so. If you look at most core Rulebook type products on DTRPG that are less costly ($15-pwyw), they absolutely do not deliver the same level of quality in their products as Dragonslayer RPG. They more often than not look like AI-generated art with weird, poor text layouts.

As to my own negative impressions of the game? Barbarians with rage - absolutely hate that class feature every time it is used in a game. It doesn't turn me off entirely to Dragonslayer RPG, mind you, but I cringe every time a player chooses a rage barbarian. And I do expect one of my players to do that.

I have to agree that keeping the full save tables and attack matrices with the class info would have been better for players, but viewing the class info section I believe what he was going for was a quick introduction into the basics of each class.

More as I read further.

I agree with Dropbear on the rage for barbarians ability.  Never something I liked.  And they still have too many scattered abilities for my taste.  I think a couple situational wilderness abilities based on origin, the ability to fight to -10 HP, extra quickness in non-bulky or no armor as reflected by periodic AC bumps, better saves (which they have in Dragonslayer) and some kind of superstitiously oriented penalty concerning magic and magical items would be sufficient.  I also give them d14 hit dice in my games, but we have pretty lethal crits.

This reminds me that Dragonslayer also has very simple crit and fumble rules.

This is a game book that's way too expensive for being another of a another of a another OSR fantasy D&D retro clone, especially as a B/W book. Unless an OSR game book can do something different enough from WWN, Hyperborea and ACKS most likely I won't consider it unless it's really cost effective to warrant at least looking at.

Quote from: Dropbear on February 11, 2024, 08:28:53 AM

I will have to agree with the positives Persimmon has noted on this review and thumbs up for the brief review.

The interesting thing about multiclassing, from what I have heard from Dr. Gillespie, is that it will allow many level-limited demihuman characters in a sense to explore all four basic classes. Obviously, Dwarves cannot be magic-users or illusionists. But say your dwarf survives up to hitting his level limit in Cleric, and you didn't multi class to begin with? Start taking Fighter levels. And an elf could theoretically eventually be a fighter/magic-user/cleric/thief even if they didn't start out classes as all of them originally.

I'll have to clarify with him at some point whether capping a class out first and then multiclassing into a different class would make you split your xp two ways or just earn as normal.

The one thing about multiclassing XP that may be problematic if the XP was not split for the 2nd and subsequent classes is the rapid level gain.If an elf got to say, 5th level as a fighter before starting the magic user class then going on adventures with a 4th-6th level party. The XP gain on those adventures would be enough to attain 2nd level in no time. I never liked the splitting rules either. Having to split XP two or three ways when only a single class can still advance is pretty brutal. I would have to come up with something else.

Quote from: RebelSky on February 11, 2024, 09:48:52 AM
This is a game book that's way too expensive for being another of a another of a another OSR fantasy D&D retro clone, especially as a B/W book. Unless an OSR game book can do something different enough from WWN, Hyperborea and ACKS most likely I won't consider it unless it's really cost effective to warrant at least looking at.

Two out of the three you mentioned aren't things I'd spend money on anyway. I'm not exactly a Crawford devotee - although I would give SWN props, I don't care much for WWN. ACKS isn't my bag, either. Hyperborea is great though. I just liked the art style used in 2E way better than Diogo Nogueiro's art.

And it's in the art style where I think Dragonslayer is sublime, I really like black & white line art style.

As far as the price? No different than buying hard copies or pdfs of OSE. Cheaper than buying either version, really. If you want to talk price gouging for product, OSE is a bigger culprit of that practice. Better to have one book with everything needed to play loaded in than six books or eight books (or at minimum, two) depending on your desired flavor of OSE.

I'd rather spend the money on Shadowdark than on OSE, ACKS, or WWN. I've already spent the money on Dragonslayer and it's more than worth it.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on February 11, 2024, 10:09:05 AM

Quote from: Dropbear on February 11, 2024, 08:28:53 AM

I will have to agree with the positives Persimmon has noted on this review and thumbs up for the brief review.

The interesting thing about multiclassing, from what I have heard from Dr. Gillespie, is that it will allow many level-limited demihuman characters in a sense to explore all four basic classes. Obviously, Dwarves cannot be magic-users or illusionists. But say your dwarf survives up to hitting his level limit in Cleric, and you didn't multi class to begin with? Start taking Fighter levels. And an elf could theoretically eventually be a fighter/magic-user/cleric/thief even if they didn't start out classes as all of them originally.

I'll have to clarify with him at some point whether capping a class out first and then multiclassing into a different class would make you split your xp two ways or just earn as normal.

The one thing about multiclassing XP that may be problematic if the XP was not split for the 2nd and subsequent classes is the rapid level gain.If an elf got to say, 5th level as a fighter before starting the magic user class then going on adventures with a 4th-6th level party. The XP gain on those adventures would be enough to attain 2nd level in no time. I never liked the splitting rules either. Having to split XP two or three ways when only a single class can still advance is pretty brutal. I would have to come up with something else.

My favorite version of multi-classing is from Castles & Crusades.  You just add both or all three classes required XP together, plus an add-on and advance simultaneously.  Since they don't have racial level limits for classes, it's pretty easy.  At the lower levels you're not too far behind and at higher levels your multiple classes make up for being generally a level or two behind the group.  In my campaign, because I do have racial class restrictions, only demi-humans can multi-class anyhow. 

On the other hand, C&C has this class and a half thing that I hate.

Quote from: Dropbear on February 11, 2024, 12:55:04 PM

Quote from: RebelSky on February 11, 2024, 09:48:52 AM
This is a game book that's way too expensive for being another of a another of a another OSR fantasy D&D retro clone, especially as a B/W book. Unless an OSR game book can do something different enough from WWN, Hyperborea and ACKS most likely I won't consider it unless it's really cost effective to warrant at least looking at.

Two out of the three you mentioned aren't things I'd spend money on anyway. I'm not exactly a Crawford devotee - although I would give SWN props, I don't care much for WWN. ACKS isn't my bag, either. Hyperborea is great though. I just liked the art style used in 2E way better than Diogo Nogueiro's art.

And it's in the art style where I think Dragonslayer is sublime, I really like black & white line art style.

As far as the price? No different than buying hard copies or pdfs of OSE. Cheaper than buying either version, really. If you want to talk price gouging for product, OSE is a bigger culprit of that practice. Better to have one book with everything needed to play loaded in than six books or eight books (or at minimum, two) depending on your desired flavor of OSE.

I'd rather spend the money on Shadowdark than on OSE, ACKS, or WWN. I've already spent the money on Dragonslayer and it's more than worth it.

Agree on Hyperborea.  2e was far better than 3e in most respects IMO.  I prefer one book to two, and the art is FAR better in 2e.  Jeff also messed with the monster stat blocks and not in a good way.  One thing I did like was including percentage chances for magic spells to be found on scrolls for the various spell levels.  I tend to randomly roll spell scrolls and that's a time saver.

Quote from: Dropbear on February 11, 2024, 12:55:04 PM

Quote from: RebelSky on February 11, 2024, 09:48:52 AM
This is a game book that's way too expensive for being another of a another of a another OSR fantasy D&D retro clone, especially as a B/W book. Unless an OSR game book can do something different enough from WWN, Hyperborea and ACKS most likely I won't consider it unless it's really cost effective to warrant at least looking at.

Two out of the three you mentioned aren't things I'd spend money on anyway. I'm not exactly a Crawford devotee - although I would give SWN props, I don't care much for WWN. ACKS isn't my bag, either. Hyperborea is great though. I just liked the art style used in 2E way better than Diogo Nogueiro's art.

And it's in the art style where I think Dragonslayer is sublime, I really like black & white line art style.

As far as the price? No different than buying hard copies or pdfs of OSE. Cheaper than buying either version, really. If you want to talk price gouging for product, OSE is a bigger culprit of that practice. Better to have one book with everything needed to play loaded in than six books or eight books (or at minimum, two) depending on your desired flavor of OSE.

I'd rather spend the money on Shadowdark than on OSE, ACKS, or WWN. I've already spent the money on Dragonslayer and it's more than worth it.

OSE Classic Fantasy, is just one complete volume; for the whole shebang.  B/X type content only, though.  But it does offer a single volume, complete OSR game.

So far I'm liking it, especially the presentation.  Unfortunately, I just codified my personal homebrew of S&W for my school group, so I'm not going to switch over right now.  But there does seem to be quite a bit I can steal from it, especially magic items and spells...

Quote from: Eirikrautha on February 11, 2024, 04:20:41 PM
So far I'm liking it, especially the presentation.  Unfortunately, I just codified my personal homebrew of S&W for my school group, so I'm not going to switch over right now.  But there does seem to be quite a bit I can steal from it, especially magic items and spells...

Yeah, those are two areas where S&W is a bit light, but adding stuff doesn't hurt the game.  Rumor has it that Matt Finch will be releasing an Unearthed Arcana style expansion for S&W later this year.

One thing that I am a bit disappointed in is the almost comlete lack of an encumbrance system. There're rules about moving more slowly based on what armor you're wearing and how much treasure you're carrying, but nothing about how much equipment you can carry besides saying you can take "items that can be reasonably carried by the character." I'll probably port in the dots encumbrance system from neoclassical geek revival. I like games to have a relatively restrictive encumbrance system, it makes using hirelings as packbearers and beasts of burden worth the hassle, and those can be used to great effect by the DM.

Quote from: Zenoguy3 on February 11, 2024, 10:54:39 PM
One thing that I am a bit disappointed in is the almost comlete lack of an encumbrance system. There're rules about moving more slowly based on what armor you're wearing and how much treasure you're carrying, but nothing about how much equipment you can carry besides saying you can take "items that can be reasonably carried by the character." I'll probably port in the dots encumbrance system from neoclassical geek revival. I like games to have a relatively restrictive encumbrance system, it makes using hirelings as packbearers and beasts of burden worth the hassle, and those can be used to great effect by the DM.

Fair enough.  In 42 plus years of gaming no one I've ever played with has closely tracked encumbrance.  Even in simple games and even if we said we were going to.  By two sessions in, it was basically handwaved.  I do try to maintain some level of realism, but we're not closely tracking that stuff.  And by the higher levels everyone has bags of holding, portable holes and the like anyhow.

Quote from: Jam The MF on February 11, 2024, 02:03:33 PM

Quote from: Dropbear on February 11, 2024, 12:55:04 PM

Quote from: RebelSky on February 11, 2024, 09:48:52 AM
This is a game book that's way too expensive for being another of a another of a another OSR fantasy D&D retro clone, especially as a B/W book. Unless an OSR game book can do something different enough from WWN, Hyperborea and ACKS most likely I won't consider it unless it's really cost effective to warrant at least looking at.

Two out of the three you mentioned aren't things I'd spend money on anyway. I'm not exactly a Crawford devotee - although I would give SWN props, I don't care much for WWN. ACKS isn't my bag, either. Hyperborea is great though. I just liked the art style used in 2E way better than Diogo Nogueiro's art.

And it's in the art style where I think Dragonslayer is sublime, I really like black & white line art style.

As far as the price? No different than buying hard copies or pdfs of OSE. Cheaper than buying either version, really. If you want to talk price gouging for product, OSE is a bigger culprit of that practice. Better to have one book with everything needed to play loaded in than six books or eight books (or at minimum, two) depending on your desired flavor of OSE.

I'd rather spend the money on Shadowdark than on OSE, ACKS, or WWN. I've already spent the money on Dragonslayer and it's more than worth it.

Code Select Expand

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OSE Classic Fantasy, is just one complete volume; for the whole shebang.  B/X type content only, though.  But it does offer a single volume, complete OSR game.

I'm comparing OSE to Dragonslayer. Taking the single volume of Classic does not suffice to push a price comparison because it does not include the Advanced Fantasy volumes. Which would need to be included for an accurate comparison for content available for a comparable price. Two books are required at minimum

OSE is therefore still more expensive than Dragonslayer.

Now comparing content and gameplay? I don't care for OSE Bards, at all. Granted the Barbarian doesn't rage so that's a plus. But then the artwork, bleagh. By comparison, it pales. And the Monk is non-existent in OSE - which is fine but I like Dragonslayer RPG's western style Monk class. Overall, I find more value in Dragonslayer RPG both in content and in pricing.

Quote from: Persimmon on February 11, 2024, 11:05:06 PM

Fair enough.  In 42 plus years of gaming no one I've ever played with has closely tracked encumbrance.  Even in simple games and even if we said we were going to.  By two sessions in, it was basically handwaved.  I do try to maintain some level of realism, but we're not closely tracking that stuff.  And by the higher levels everyone has bags of holding, portable holes and the like anyhow.

I tend to handwave encumbrance too, but I want to try a game where I don't, it'll add a lot of the resource management aspects I hear about but never get to use because of handwaved equipment. But I do agree that it can become a pain to add up all the time.

Maybe using something like that grid system the animated spellbook guy talked about would work, since it doesn't require players to do any math.

Found it. (https://youtu.be/koKL1wSRLpk) Yea rewatching that, I kind of like it. It solves the, "it's a pain to keep track of on the table" problem, though at the expense of having a significant amount of extra work on the gamemaster's prep. Honestly I think the part I like the most is just putting individual equipment items on separate pieces of paper or card, so that you can get new inventory by just grabbing a physical object as opposed to having to write a thing on your character sheet. Especially for common consumables like rations or ammunition.

Quote from: Zenoguy3 on February 12, 2024, 12:57:38 AM
Maybe using something like that grid system the animated spellbook guy talked about would work, since it doesn't require players to do any math.

Imagine trying to keep all those chits on your sheet at the table, hard to picture that going well!

Fortunately, the real benefit of that system isn't the chits, it's the simplified weights. Instead of measuring everything in pounds and ounces, encumbrance is measured in "chunks" (pick your word for the unit of measure).

This means that even if players don't have chits and do do math, that math is adding numbers from about 1 to 12. Fast and easy. I can tell you this sort of system is what we use at our table, and everyone loves it and gets all the fun of resource management without the headaches.

Quote from: Zalman on February 12, 2024, 07:48:59 AM

Quote from: Zenoguy3 on February 12, 2024, 12:57:38 AM
Maybe using something like that grid system the animated spellbook guy talked about would work, since it doesn't require players to do any math.

Imagine trying to keep all those chits on your sheet at the table, hard to picture that going well!

Fortunately, the real benefit of that system isn't the chits, it's the simplified weights. Instead of measuring everything in pounds and ounces, encumbrance is measured in "chunks" (pick your word for the unit of measure).

This means that even if players don't have chits and do do math, that math is adding numbers from about 1 to 12. Fast and easy. I can tell you this sort of system is what we use at our table, and everyone loves it and gets all the fun of resource management without the headaches.

It's weird you guys have mentioned this because even though I've never heard of this thing before I made a similar thing in isolation. In my group for OSE my wife would play with us and she has really bad Dyscalcula and Dyslexia so can't do maths very well at all. I ended up making her a special character sheet that had symbols instead of letters for her to reference and part of that was a very similar chunk system. Instead of adding things together I had blocks on the character sheet you shaded in with a pencil. Items weighed an amount of blocks and if your blocks were all shaded in you couldn't carry any more stuff. You had as many blocks as you had strength so a strength 18 character had 18 blocks. It was so simple the other group members started to use it. And it was great because it still allowed me to fine tune things to be "realistic" or at least believable. For example, a shield would be 5 blocks. They're heavy and bulky. They take up a lot of space. If you hang it on your back that's still taking up space. So people didn't just carry an entire dungeon's worth of treasure and could only hold onto a logical amount of things to carry. Obviously things like bags could increase your blocks too so it still meant that there was inventory management. It was just easier and more objective without being too mathematical.

Quote from: King Tyranno on February 12, 2024, 10:36:32 AM
It's weird you guys have mentioned this because even though I've never heard of this thing before I made a similar thing in isolation. In my group for OSE my wife would play with us and she has really bad Dyscalcula and Dyslexia so can't do maths very well at all. I ended up making her a special character sheet that had symbols instead of letters for her to reference and part of that was a very similar chunk system. Instead of adding things together I had blocks on the character sheet you shaded in with a pencil. Items weighed an amount of blocks and if your blocks were all shaded in you couldn't carry any more stuff. You had as many blocks as you had strength so a strength 18 character had 18 blocks. It was so simple the other group members started to use it. And it was great because it still allowed me to fine tune things to be "realistic" or at least believable. For example, a shield would be 5 blocks. They're heavy and bulky. They take up a lot of space. If you hang it on your back that's still taking up space. So people didn't just carry an entire dungeon's worth of treasure and could only hold onto a logical amount of things to carry. Obviously things like bags could increase your blocks too so it still meant that there was inventory management. It was just easier and more objective without being too mathematical.

That sounds pretty similar to the encumbrance system in NeoClassical Geek Revival, there things have "dots" which is an abstraction of weight and bulkiness. Something that can be carried in one hand without issue is one dot, and a handful of small similar items can be compressed into one dot. Characters could carry as many dots as their Str. The way containers work is also interesting, a container has a dot weight that doesn't change based on how much stuff is inside, and has a size limit of the items that can be put inside, which must e smaller than the container itself, and a maximum total dots it can contain, and a search value which represents how long it takes to find what you're looking for in the container. This means that with intelligent packing you can carry a lot more than you could otherwise, but it also takes time to find anything that's well stowed. You could even nest containers in other containers as long as the dot size limit isn't meet, but then you have to rifle through successive containers.

Honestly, I think I'll use that system in my dragonslayer game, with the additional caveat that I'll have everyone write the items of index cards I've cut in half, so that it's easy to rearrange items as necessary, such as dropping a bag before getting into combat to reduce encumbrance.

Quote from: Zenoguy3 on February 12, 2024, 11:11:06 AM
That sounds pretty similar to the encumbrance system in NeoClassical Geek Revival, there things have "dots" which is an abstraction of weight and bulkiness.

Indeed it's certainly not unique and there are several systems I've heard of that use something similar nowadays. I most commonly hear it called "Slot Encumbrance".

Quote from: Zenoguy3 on February 12, 2024, 11:11:06 AMThe way containers work is also interesting, a container has a dot weight that doesn't change based on how much stuff is inside, and has a size limit of the items that can be put inside, which must e smaller than the container itself, and a maximum total dots it can contain, and a search value which represents how long it takes to find what you're looking for in the container. This means that with intelligent packing you can carry a lot more than you could otherwise, but it also takes time to find anything that's well stowed. You could even nest containers in other containers as long as the dot size limit isn't meet, but then you have to rifle through successive containers.

That's pretty cool. Containers are definitely something to think about when trying to simplify encumbrance. What's working OK so far for us is that the weight of everything includes its container, and containers themselves are only counted if they're empty.

/ramble on

For me to play OSE *Advanced* Fantasy (which is the equivalent of Dragonslayer's Basic/Advanced mix), it will cost me at least $80 (£63.22) and that's without the reference sheet booklet which is very handy to have but adds $10 (£7.90). So at least $80.00 (£63.22) and as much as $100 (£79.03).

---

I want this, even if only just to read through and get a buzz from the old-school art. But, I'm probably a bit overly pedantic when it comes to errata (I mean, I'm probably going to want to get it to the table at some point), so if I buy a book for £63 (and one that's PoD) I want it to be completely errata-free. Which it won't be.

Also, I can't even buy the PDF and then decide to buy the hardback at a later date because there's no price reduction.

I could buy the PDF and have it printed at a local printer, which would be a lot cheaper, but would probably break a few copyright rules. Or not. No idea.

/ramble off

Quote from: Scutter on February 20, 2024, 09:38:40 AM

I could buy the PDF and have it printed at a local printer, which would be a lot cheaper, but would probably break a few copyright rules. Or not. No idea.

/ramble off

If you own the PDF you are allowed to print as many copies as you want for personal use.  As long as there is no distribution/sale of the product you are free and clear.

QuoteFor me to play OSE *Advanced* Fantasy (which is the equivalent of Dragonslayer's Basic/Advanced mix), it will cost me at least $80 (£63.22) and that's without the reference sheet booklet which is very handy to have but adds $10 (£7.90). So at least $80.00 (£63.22) and as much as $100 (£79.03).

Dragonslayer is most definitely not the equivalent of OSE Advanced Fantasy, its more in comparison with Advanced Labyrinth Lord.

Quote from: TheShadowSpawn on February 20, 2024, 11:47:55 AM

QuoteFor me to play OSE *Advanced* Fantasy (which is the equivalent of Dragonslayer's Basic/Advanced mix), it will cost me at least $80 (£63.22) and that's without the reference sheet booklet which is very handy to have but adds $10 (£7.90). So at least $80.00 (£63.22) and as much as $100 (£79.03).

Dragonslayer is most definitely not the equivalent of OSE Advanced Fantasy, its more in comparison with Advanced Labyrinth Lord.

I second this. I would go as far as saying that when using LL supplements, they're 100% compatible with Dragonslayer.

I thought I read somewhere that Dragonslayer was a mash-up of Basic/Advanced. Perhaps I'm misremembering. Anyway, it'll cost £36 to have the pdf printed out in coil-bound format. So somewhat cheaper and it'll lay flat. I'm tempted.

Quote from: Scutter on February 20, 2024, 02:11:43 PM
I thought I read somewhere that Dragonslayer was a mash-up of Basic/Advanced. Perhaps I'm misremembering. Anyway, it'll cost £36 to have the pdf printed out in coil-bound format. So somewhat cheaper and it'll lay flat. I'm tempted.

You're correct on Dragonslayer being the best of B/X and AD&D 1st ed.

Quote from: Scutter on February 20, 2024, 02:11:43 PM
I thought I read somewhere that Dragonslayer was a mash-up of Basic/Advanced. Perhaps I'm misremembering. Anyway, it'll cost £36 to have the pdf printed out in coil-bound format. So somewhat cheaper and it'll lay flat. I'm tempted.

You are correct there, but not about the two games being the same. There are very real differences in the spells, spell aquisition and selection and the power of magic items.  These differences become very pronounced between 5th and 9th level.

Can't find a character sheet for this. Actually can't find any resource/download site for anything Dragonslayer.

There's one in the PDF, though it's at the front of the book

Quote from: blackstone on February 20, 2024, 03:04:35 PM

Quote from: Scutter on February 20, 2024, 02:11:43 PM
I thought I read somewhere that Dragonslayer was a mash-up of Basic/Advanced. Perhaps I'm misremembering. Anyway, it'll cost £36 to have the pdf printed out in coil-bound format. So somewhat cheaper and it'll lay flat. I'm tempted.

You're correct on Dragonslayer being the best of B/X and AD&D 1st ed.

Personally, the best of B/X and AD&D 1st Ed are B/X and AD&D 1e. They each have a distinct flavor, trying to mix them ruins the mix. You can house rule either, but mixing the two?


I still haven't really perused it seriously, but a number of things leap out at me.

Firstly, the art is coherent. Not especially good, but not bad and coherent, same style and the monster pictures echo the 1e MM.

Secondly, the rules seem familiar at first glance, but weird upon second glance.

For instance, instead of using THAC0 or Attack Bonus, somehow both are used.   First you find the THAC0 as if it were 20, like something has an AC or 5, you'd subtract that from 20 to get 15. But then characters have attack bonus, so you roll the d20, add the attack bonus, and compare to the number from the first step.

It's like the worst of both. Still better than ACKS.

Attack Bonus progressions are weird, apparently deliberately so to encourage flanking and maximizing bonuses.  For instance, fighter types stay at +0 until 3rd level, at which point it increases by 1 until 10th (at which point, progress apparently stops). Cleric types are close to B/X, but a little worse, topping out at +4 at 10th level. Thieves backstab doesn't seem to improve.

But on the flip side, characters all get 10 hit dice and after 10th level, they still get constitution modifiers for hit points.

So you're likely to end up at higher levels with characters with a lot of hit points who can't hit anything.

Quote from: JeremyR on February 22, 2024, 05:01:47 PM

Quote from: blackstone on February 20, 2024, 03:04:35 PM

Quote from: Scutter on February 20, 2024, 02:11:43 PM
I thought I read somewhere that Dragonslayer was a mash-up of Basic/Advanced. Perhaps I'm misremembering. Anyway, it'll cost £36 to have the pdf printed out in coil-bound format. So somewhat cheaper and it'll lay flat. I'm tempted.

You're correct on Dragonslayer being the best of B/X and AD&D 1st ed.

Personally, the best of B/X and AD&D 1st Ed are B/X and AD&D 1e. They each have a distinct flavor, trying to mix them ruins the mix. You can house rule either, but mixing the two?


I still haven't really perused it seriously, but a number of things leap out at me.

Firstly, the art is coherent. Not especially good, but not bad and coherent, same style and the monster pictures echo the 1e MM.

Secondly, the rules seem familiar at first glance, but weird upon second glance.

For instance, instead of using THAC0 or Attack Bonus, somehow both are used.   First you find the THAC0 as if it were 20, like something has an AC or 5, you'd subtract that from 20 to get 15. But then characters have attack bonus, so you roll the d20, add the attack bonus, and compare to the number from the first step.

It's like the worst of both. Still better than ACKS.

Attack Bonus progressions are weird, apparently deliberately so to encourage flanking and maximizing bonuses.  For instance, fighter types stay at +0 until 3rd level, at which point it increases by 1 until 10th (at which point, progress apparently stops). Cleric types are close to B/X, but a little worse, topping out at +4 at 10th level. Thieves backstab doesn't seem to improve.

But on the flip side, characters all get 10 hit dice and after 10th level, they still get constitution modifiers for hit points.

So you're likely to end up at higher levels with characters with a lot of hit points who can't hit anything.

Yeah, while I like much of what's in here, the whole attack progression thing is weird.  This is made worse in that he uses the fighter progression for monsters rather than simply giving them an attack bonus equal to hit dice like you get in Castles & Crusades.  I've already decided that we'll just use one of my other games' GM screens and go with the matrices there.  As for the hit dice thing, I just let characters keep rolling for hit dice all the way through.  If the monsters can do it, why not the PCs?  Our lethal crit system balances it out.

That does sound a little odd, and overly complicated. I was considering this or OSE Advanced and now I'm strongly favouring the latter.

Quote from: Scutter on February 23, 2024, 04:12:33 AM
That does sound a little odd, and overly complicated. I was considering this or OSE Advanced and now I'm strongly favouring the latter.

Just remember that OSE Adanced only goes up to level 14.  If you want to take the game any higher than that you have to do some homework. 

The equipment available is from the B/X expert rules with some animals added (dogs).  So if you are okay with plate mail armor costing 60gp then just use the prices as is.  That little aspect of B/X always struck me as too good to be true.

Quote from: Svenhelgrim on February 23, 2024, 04:51:36 AM

Quote from: Scutter on February 23, 2024, 04:12:33 AM
That does sound a little odd, and overly complicated. I was considering this or OSE Advanced and now I'm strongly favouring the latter.

Just remember that OSE Adanced only goes up to level 14.  If you want to take the game any higher than that you have to do some homework. 

The equipment available is from the B/X expert rules with some animals added (dogs).  So if you are okay with plate mail armor costing 60gp then just use the prices as is.  That little aspect of B/X always struck me as too good to be true.

If you have access to ACKS I think it would not be hard to integrate the rules for high level spells. I think that is the biggest sticking point for some with a 14 level cap.

I'm ok with a level 14 cap because, in over 40 years of roleplaying, I can count on one hand the number of times we've had pcs go beyond 14th.

Rethinking the combat rules for Dragonslayer, as I've been watching an actual play on YT, the combat rules play fast. Greg seemed to be adding the opponent's AC to a positive modifier (no doubt the Attack Bonus), and if they got over 20, it was a successful hit. So something like 1d20 + AC + AB => 20.

What is odd though, is how fighters don't get any Attack Bonuses until level 3. That feels like mangling certain rules so you can have them interact with another rule (flanking/rear attack bonuses).

you could always house rule stuff. nobody says you can't

Quote from: JeremyR on February 22, 2024, 05:01:47 PM
Secondly, the rules seem familiar at first glance, but weird upon second glance.

For instance, instead of using THAC0 or Attack Bonus, somehow both are used.   First you find the THAC0 as if it were 20, like something has an AC or 5, you'd subtract that from 20 to get 15. But then characters have attack bonus, so you roll the d20, add the attack bonus, and compare to the number from the first step.

It's like the worst of both. Still better than ACKS.
...

My one knock on ACKs is its use of AC0, before you add armor bonuses instead of AC10, like conventional ascending AC. Slightly different for no discernable reason.

Looks like DragonSlayer went the same route. Did something different, because reasons...

In my opinion; Either 100% cater to the old school, and use the actual old school mechanics (like Hyperboria did), or just use standard ascending AC.

I find the creation of 'alternate' old-school mechanics more than a bit perplexing.

QuotePersonally, the best of B/X and AD&D 1st Ed are B/X and AD&D 1e. They each have a distinct flavor, trying to mix them ruins the mix. You can house rule either, but mixing the two?

I have to disagree there.  When AD&D came out and many of the rules in the new edition didn't make any sense, especially to the younger players, this mix and match of the rules from both editions is what most tables were playing with.

QuoteFirstly, the art is coherent. Not especially good, but not bad and coherent, same style and the monster pictures echo the 1e MM.

Art is definitely subjective, but these artists are a mix of the best of old and new.

QuoteFor instance, instead of using THAC0 or Attack Bonus, somehow both are used.   First you find the THAC0 as if it were 20, like something has an AC or 5, you'd subtract that from 20 to get 15. But then characters have attack bonus, so you roll the d20, add the attack bonus, and compare to the number from the first step.

Not sure what the problem here is. Its pretty simple.  Everyone has to modify their THACO for high or low ability scores, this just couples your attack progression with your ability modifier. Roll and adjust what you hit. Literally no difference.

One option that Greg has for monsters in the game is:

QuoteAlternatively, the Maze Controller can use a Target20 Combat Roll. The monster rolls a 1d20 and adds its HD and the AC of the target. The monster scores a hit if the result is 20 or higher.

I use this in my Forbidden Caverns of Archaia game and it works very well.

QuoteAttack Bonus progressions are weird, apparently deliberately so to encourage flanking and maximizing bonuses.  For instance, fighter types stay at +0 until 3rd level, at which point it increases by 1 until 10th (at which point, progress apparently stops). Cleric types are close to B/X, but a little worse, topping out at +4 at 10th level. Thieves backstab doesn't seem to improve.

I have no problem with the limited attack bonuses in the game, I prefer to keep the bonuses within reason for the players, even if it means tougher opponents. I agree about the issue with the thief backstab not progressing, I miss that, considering I'm playing an 8th level Dragonslayer thief in a 3 year long Barrowmaze campaign.(We've been using Dragonslayer for a few months, since Greg was kind enough to share an early draft of the PDF with us)

QuoteSo you're likely to end up at higher levels with characters with a lot of hit points who can't hit anything.

I can tell you that isn't the case at all, at least not in our game. We play characters ranging from 7th - 10th level and have had no issues hitting monsters, even ones of higher hit dice.


For those of you looking for a charcter sheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T9PnWKLWtWFbH1ccC7NyYV4p49UC9fN5/view?usp=sharing

Yea honestly I'm going to convert everything to ascending AC. I understand how thac0 works, and I don't begrudge those that prefer it, but as somebody whos first real exposure to TTRPGs was PF, ascending ac will always be my native language. The conversion's not hard.

Quote from: Zenoguy3 on February 25, 2024, 12:37:12 PM
Yea honestly I'm going to convert everything to ascending AC. I understand how thac0 works, and I don't begrudge those that prefer it, but as somebody whos first real exposure to TTRPGs was PF, ascending ac will always be my native language. The conversion's not hard.

At the end of the day, it will always be a much simpler job for me as GM to describe AC as " Roll under. Bigger number better." than "okay so you look at the AC and then consult the attack matrix and cross reference it making sure to keep all your bonuses in mind. Remember that lower is better even though you've probably had years of video games training you that higher is better including DnD video games. But you can break out of that and... wait, where are you going?"

Some may turn their noses up at this idea of making rules you can actually explain to a player verbally succinctly. But I actually want to have fun and not spend large amounts of time consulting charts and tables for abstract results that I need to calculate using maths. I'm not against the use of maths or crunch in games (My favorite RPG of all time is Dark Heresy after all) so long as it's something the average person or at least the GM can calculate quickly in their head. Descending AC and THAC0 is not that. 

Quote from: King Tyranno on February 25, 2024, 03:08:23 PM

Quote from: Zenoguy3 on February 25, 2024, 12:37:12 PM
Yea honestly I'm going to convert everything to ascending AC. I understand how thac0 works, and I don't begrudge those that prefer it, but as somebody whos first real exposure to TTRPGs was PF, ascending ac will always be my native language. The conversion's not hard.

At the end of the day, it will always be a much simpler job for me as GM to describe AC as " Roll under. Bigger number better." than "okay so you look at the AC and then consult the attack matrix and cross reference it making sure to keep all your bonuses in mind. Remember that lower is better even though you've probably had years of video games training you that higher is better including DnD video games. But you can break out of that and... wait, where are you going?"

Some may turn their noses up at this idea of making rules you can actually explain to a player verbally succinctly. But I actually want to have fun and not spend large amounts of time consulting charts and tables for abstract results that I need to calculate using maths. I'm not against the use of maths or crunch in games (My favorite RPG of all time is Dark Heresy after all) so long as it's something the average person or at least the GM can calculate quickly in their head. Descending AC and THAC0 is not that.

So you play with morons?  Calculating THACO or descending AC is literally low level elementary school math, on the level of making change for a dollar.  It's the same level as using ascending AC except with subtraction.  Now it may be marginally slower for the "average person", but c'mon, is it really that hard?  And if it's written on your character sheet, as is standard for old school games you're actually not even calculating anything.

That being said, having read, or at least skimmed the pdf of "Dragonslayer," I didn't see where he actually explained how the attacks work anywhere.  It seems implied, which is definitely an issue for newbies.

Chapter 7: How To Attack.

Its even bookmarked in the PDF.

Kek. Didn't intend to start a THAC0 v AAC war. But I'm here for it. Lemme make my popcorn.

Quote from: Zenoguy3 on February 26, 2024, 01:18:30 AM
Kek. Didn't intend to start a THAC0 v AAC war. But I'm here for it. Lemme make my popcorn.

Greetings!

*Laughing* popcorn indeed!

*Shrugs* It seems like a pretty stupid thing to get bent out of shape over, doesn't it? THACO is irrelevant. Most gamers--even "Old School" gamers--seem to believe that THACO is far inferior as a system than Ascending AC. I can't count the *legions* of gamers that praised AAC in preference to THACO. Certainly, OSR systems have much to praise that remain fun, effective, and brilliant, even.

THACO isn't one of those systems though. The "New School" has made some improvements and refinements of the D&D game over the years. Getting rid of THACO and replacing it with Ascending AC is definitely one of those improvements. Just thinking about it from a logical approach, and actual usage, it is obvious that THACO is awkward and primitive by comparison. ;D

In letters in Dragon Magazine, and of course on online forums, many, many gamers celebrated THACO being done away with. The few people that somehow *liked* THACO--and argued in favour of it against Ascending AC have generally, in my experience, been few and far between.

Contrary to what a few THACO partisans like to believe, just about everyone thinks that THACO is awkward and *not* intuitive, whereas Ascending AC is much simpler and more intuitive for everyone at the table.

Myself, well, as an "Old School" gamer, a Grognard certainly--I like most things from the OSR and back in the day, but like others, I don't miss using THACO, or explaining it to players, or new gamers. Ascending AC is just simpler and easier to use and explain, for everyone.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Zenoguy3 on February 26, 2024, 01:18:30 AM
Kek. Didn't intend to start a THAC0 v AAC war. But I'm here for it. Lemme make my popcorn.

They're the same thing except one is + and the other is -.

THACO was an innovation to help people not have to look things up on an ATTACK MATRIX.   

You can say that ASCENDING ARMOR CLASS, is one further innovation toward that end. 

However if you want to use THACO, or descending AC to keep undesirables out of your game, you might be on to something. 

Back in the day, we had to adapt to the game.  We learned the rules inside and out, and then we broke, or changed them to suit our needs.  There was a sort of discipline involved.  It was a test to see who really loved the game and who was going to stick around.  Character death, shitty stats, save-or-die, THACO... these were the things you had to endure to prove your love for the game. 

This "ATTACK MATRIX" sounds like a neat idea. No more picking whatever has the most or highest bonus, weapons preform differently based on the target's protection...

Quote from: Svenhelgrim on February 26, 2024, 04:52:10 AM
THACO was an innovation to help people not have to look things up on an ATTACK MATRIX.   

Well, in that it failed miserably because we all still looked up every roll on a chart. We just switched from reading the chart in the book to copying the relevant line onto our character sheets. No one I played with calculated THAC0 at the table. The calculations for what was needed to hit every armor class were done beforehand, and written as a 1-line matrix on the character sheet.

I agree it's a natural evolution though -- THAC0 was an attempt to turn a lookup into a calculation. Ascending AC actually achieved that.

Greg seems clearly attached to descending AC for nostalgia reasons (and perhaps the side benefit of gatekeeping) ... which is cool, just saying that I haven't heard him argue that it's "easier" (caveat, I wasn't watching too closely).

I don't see the issue here.

THAC0 18 vs AC 7 = 11+ to hit

THAC0 14 vs AC 2 = 12+ to hit

THAC0 8 vs AC -2 = 10+ to hit

Etc.

Working out what you need to hit takes a second, then you roll the d20, and add relevant modifiers.

Quote
Greg seems clearly attached to descending AC for nostalgia reasons (and perhaps the side benefit of gatekeeping) ... which is cool, just saying that I haven't heard him argue that it's "easier" (caveat, I wasn't watching too closely).

I get that feeling too. I also believe the choice was made because all of his megadungeons use descending armor class, and he also wanted the game to be immediately useable with older edition adventure modules.

I've been playing the game for months, with ages ranging from 11-52 (damn am I that old already) and the kids caught onto descending AC pretty fast. I personally prefer ascending, but its not a deal breaker.

Quote from: Zenoguy3 on February 26, 2024, 01:18:30 AM
Kek. Didn't intend to start a THAC0 v AAC war. But I'm here for it. Lemme make my popcorn.

Pretty much every one of these discussions ends up devolving into it somehow.

I find in games that use descending AC there's less of this:

Player: <Rolls dice> 15!

GM: Before or after mods?

In many games that use descending AC the last step for the player is looking up an AC on the little matrix. By the time you're doing that, you've already added any modifiers not reflected in the matrix. So when you announce a number, the GM and everyone else knows it's the AC that you hit.

This is of course perfectly doable with ascending AC because the math is the same. Just tell your players to report modified rolls. But I find, whether it's the rules themselves or the people who play descending AC games, the slight annoyance mentioned above happens much less frequently.

Besides tradition and gatekeeping, this is minor, but I think it plays a part.

Quote from: rytrasmi on February 26, 2024, 02:53:14 PM
I find in games that use descending AC there's less of this:

Player: <Rolls dice> 15!

GM: Before or after mods?

In many games that use descending AC the last step for the player is looking up an AC on the little matrix. By the time you're doing that, you've already added any modifiers not reflected in the matrix. So when you announce a number, the GM and everyone else knows it's the AC that you hit.

This is of course perfectly doable with ascending AC because the math is the same. Just tell your players to report modified rolls. But I find, whether it's the rules themselves or the people who play descending AC games, the slight annoyance mentioned above happens much less frequently.

Besides tradition and gatekeeping, this is minor, but I think it plays a part.

Yes, which one works best depends so much on how the GM runs the game, and the flow of information, that it would be difficult to provide a general answer outside of exhaustive observation of many games.  Plus, whatever habits people get into is telling.  So you can't just switch back and forth between ascending and descending with most groups and get a fair experiment. 

I built my system with ascending defenses, and also where a 15 or better is usually a success.  I remind the players that absent a description of the opponent being heavily armored, very agile, or I have otherwise specifically called them out as difficult to hit, a 15 hits.  So absent that, only need to tell me the exact number if it is less than 15 (which might still hit).  And this directly correlates to their characters too,  Nevertheless, it takes a lot longer to settle in for some players than others:

- Some get it right away. They roll an 18, roll damage, and just tell me "I hit for N".
- Some will need to be told 10+ times over so many fights before it sinks in.
- I'm still waiting on a few, because they are stuck with false precision, where to them it is important that I know they got a 16 or 18 or even 22 even after multiple other people in the same fight have hit with even a 13. 

So "higher is always better" is generally easier to manage, but it does have its negative side for players who lose sight of the fact that they are merely trying to get high enough.

I got my copy a week ago and have been reading through it. So far I love everything about it. I don't know why I don't get tired of retro-clones that are rehashing the same game over and over, but I don't.

The art is spot on as well. 10/10

As for some of the criticisms. While I prefer ascending, I have no problem with either descending or THAC0 because I know how to do math in my head. There is an alternate called Target 20 that I particularly like.

Just got my hard copy yesterday and it's fantastic.

Quote from: Thor's Nads on February 26, 2024, 03:55:16 PM
As for some of the criticisms. While I prefer ascending, I have no problem with either descending or THAC0 because I know how to do math in my head. There is an alternate called Target 20 that I particularly like.

I think the Thaco thing is silly in both ways.  It's not hard to convert using the 19-rule.  Just use whatever number it takes to add up to 19.   If descending AC is 3, then it's ascending 16.   

Also, don't write it that way in the first place.  Just don't.  Ascending is better.  Period

Addition is not superior to subtraction.  Both are kindergarten level mathematics.

Alright, I'm planning out my first game of this now, and I'm reviewing the rules, I think I have to be missing something. What do you do for saves above first level? Each class has a saves at first level table, but I don't see any indication of how it's supposed to change. I kinda assume each save improves by 1 each level, but for the life of me I can't find that or anything else in the book. Please tell me I'm blind.

Quote from: Zenoguy3 on July 19, 2024, 05:52:49 PMAlright, I'm planning out my first game of this now, and I'm reviewing the rules, I think I have to be missing something. What do you do for saves above first level? Each class has a saves at first level table, but I don't see any indication of how it's supposed to change. I kinda assume each save improves by 1 each level, but for the life of me I can't find that or anything else in the book. Please tell me I'm blind.

Page 258

Quote from: Crusader X on July 19, 2024, 06:26:16 PMPage 258

Thank you. I am blind.

Quote from: Zenoguy3 on July 19, 2024, 06:30:59 PM

Quote from: Crusader X on July 19, 2024, 06:26:16 PMPage 258

Thank you. I am blind.

No problem!  Let us know how the game goes.

Bought the PDF recently and like it enough to want to get a hardcopy, but it looks like Greg or whoever did his layout may have accidentally selected a rectangle in Photoshop over the title on the cover image and shifted it a few pixels, so I'm going to wait until he uploads the fix. It would drive me batty having a noticeable Photoshop mistake on a printed book!

Played it at Vengercon run by Diversity and Dragons. It was easier to play than BECMI/Rule Cyclopedia edition.  I enjoyed the game , that could have been more due to the DM than the system.

I can see why people would enjoy this type of game as it tweaks a few things here and there from the old rules.  In the end I appreciate that another system is put out, I did back and buy a copy to support Greg and Co. However, THAC0 and Old school rules (roll Over, under, around, through with d20/6/100) are not for me and my playing style.  I like simplicity and consistency and not having to shift between which dice does what and how I should roll against either higher or lower.

(https://d1vzi28wh99zvq.cloudfront.net/images/4249/492748.jpg)

The Dragonslayer hardback (monochrome version) is on sale during Thanksgiving weekend for $50 on DrivethruRPG.  The original cover hardback is still $70.  The monochrome cover looks very nice!

Dragonslayer RPG Monochrome Cover (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/492748/dragonslayer-role-playing-game-monochrome?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR10dVufQ9VXzeAzC-djdybRCsL3NjiA0o5gqNmWUmPXI-tXECjfUDx622A_aem_wB4plXcsFc5sj7MAZqXHNQ)

Quote from: Crusader X on July 19, 2024, 07:50:43 PMNo problem!  Let us know how the game goes.

Kek, Realized I forgot to do this. The one shot I ran went well. Character creation definitely took longer than I was hoping, mostly because everyone was unfamiliar with the system and having to reference a lot of things, and also because I tried to do everyone in parallel instead of one at a time. Thus we were only able to get through about half the dungeon I drew up, but what we did get through was fun. I was a bit loose on the crawling rules (formation etc) since I don't think I understand them well enough yet, but overall it was a good time. I've been running more Knave3e just because it's easier to get either new players or people who have only played 5e (which is most people in my area) into, but I plan to return to DS as soon as I have a core group ready for something with a bit more substance.

Quote from: Thor's Nads on February 26, 2024, 03:55:16 PMAs for some of the criticisms. While I prefer ascending, I have no problem with either descending or THAC0 because I know how to do math in my head. There is an alternate called Target 20 that I particularly like.

Thaaco is easy.   I run and play Old School Essentials that use Thaaco (though they have ascending as an optional rule) and there is a matrix on the sheet you fill out and you easy figure it out, even faster than ascending.

Monster is going to attack.  According to the matrix they hit an AC of 5.  Well, My AC is a 3 so it misses.  Quick and easy.

Quote from: Zenoguy3 on December 27, 2024, 01:14:41 PM

Quote from: Crusader X on July 19, 2024, 07:50:43 PMNo problem!  Let us know how the game goes.

Kek, Realized I forgot to do this. The one shot I ran went well. Character creation definitely took longer than I was hoping, mostly because everyone was unfamiliar with the system and having to reference a lot of things, and also because I tried to do everyone in parallel instead of one at a time. Thus we were only able to get through about half the dungeon I drew up, but what we did get through was fun. I was a bit loose on the crawling rules (formation etc) since I don't think I understand them well enough yet, but overall it was a good time. I've been running more Knave3e just because it's easier to get either new players or people who have only played 5e (which is most people in my area) into, but I plan to return to DS as soon as I have a core group ready for something with a bit more substance.

Good to hear.  I want to try out both Dragonslayer and Knave in the new year.

Quote from: Crusader X on November 28, 2024, 07:22:54 AM(https://d1vzi28wh99zvq.cloudfront.net/images/4249/492748.jpg)

The Dragonslayer hardback (monochrome version) is on sale during Thanksgiving weekend for $50 on DrivethruRPG.  The original cover hardback is still $70.  The monochrome cover looks very nice!

Dragonslayer RPG Monochrome Cover (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/492748/dragonslayer-role-playing-game-monochrome?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR10dVufQ9VXzeAzC-djdybRCsL3NjiA0o5gqNmWUmPXI-tXECjfUDx622A_aem_wB4plXcsFc5sj7MAZqXHNQ)

By the way, Greg Gillespie discounted the Dragonslayer core rule book down to $45 for Boxing Day.  Which was yesterday.  But maybe he's stretching the sale out to the weekend.  Regardless, $45 is the cheapest its ever been.

Quote from: Crusader X on November 28, 2024, 07:22:54 AM(https://d1vzi28wh99zvq.cloudfront.net/images/4249/492748.jpg)

straight up, I like that cover better than the hardback version.

Quote from: Aglondir on February 10, 2024, 09:12:00 PM

Quote from: Persimmon on February 10, 2024, 08:25:41 PM

Quote from: Brad on February 10, 2024, 06:52:56 PMEagerly awaiting a real review of this...if Greg Gillespie would chime in and maybe send Pundit a copy for review, that'd be great. Perhaps he can offer a South American discount.

Here's an early one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXzUvkYJ4cQ

So that's how you pronounce Symbaroum!

Word. Symbaroum is one of the best settings out there.

Well, I'm intrigued...

Read the whole thread, then watched some on YT and what's there seems interesting.

For anyone who plays/ed this long term, how different does it feel?
I'm mainly talking about the near lack of attack bonuses and reliance on positioning and the abilities that are supposed to encourage teamwork like Cleave instead of regular multi attack, emphasis on marching order etc.

Looking for something friendly to new people that leans towards 1e but mainly, I want my players to be more tactically minded.

I have S&W:C and OSE:A, but the power level nerf is a legit argument.

Quote from: Zenoguy3 on December 27, 2024, 05:48:10 PMstraight up, I like that cover better than the hardback version.

That cover looks amazing! Wish it was just the standard front cover with the original on the back.

I just ordered the pdf and hardcover with Easley cover.

I have some questions about running OSR even though I was an avid AD&D player...

I shared my excitement about this game with a friend who is buying it for his college aged son.

We have businessmen, a patent attorney, a psychologist and others in our group with the kids occasionally joining.

I am excited for this game...production quality matters...the only other OSR book I own is Lion and dragon.  I am just tired of the new wave of RPG art...tiefling shooting lasers from their tails is...something but my god look at the picture of the thief or cleric or fighter in dragonslayer...now what makes you feel like battle is at hand?  No comparison.

I am pumped and will get back to reading the pdf.  The book will be some weeks off.

Good work to Dr G. From Dr Pig.

Quote from: Crusader X on November 28, 2024, 07:22:54 AM(https://d1vzi28wh99zvq.cloudfront.net/images/4249/492748.jpg)

Wow this is beautiful. But i'm not sure I want another osr clone. I do like Greg's megadungeons But I think i'm already set with my game mechanics.

I am going to figure not quite thread necromancy as it is still within the month. One thing that has been bothering me is the criticism that Dr Gillespie has his students buy his book and write a review of it, as if this is unique and he is a monster. This is actually a common practice on many campuses; I work on a small campus in Idaho and this is not unusual at all, in fact the current theatre teacher not only made every student participate in his two person rendition of 'Turn of the Screw', (either by at least auditioning if not getting the part or by being an usher at a performance), PLUS sitting down to watch the beast, PLUS writing a five page review of the play he directed. In comparison this 'offense' seems rather mild. In most cases it is merely buying a book the professor wrote trying to clarify an abstract observation or idea. And this is nothing new, it happens all the time, yet for some reason, in this instance the practice is called out when in fact it is not an isolated incident whatsoever.

Quote from: bat on January 18, 2025, 10:52:03 AMI am going to figure not quite thread necromancy as it is still within the month. One thing that has been bothering me is the criticism that Dr Gillespie has his students buy his book and write a review of it, as if this is unique and he is a monster. This is actually a common practice on many campuses; I work on a small campus in Idaho and this is not unusual at all, in fact the current theatre teacher not only made every student participate in his two person rendition of 'Turn of the Screw', (either by at least auditioning if not getting the part or by being an usher at a performance), PLUS sitting down to watch the beast, PLUS writing a five page review of the play he directed. In comparison this 'offense' seems rather mild. In most cases it is merely buying a book the professor wrote trying to clarify an abstract observation or idea. And this is nothing new, it happens all the time, yet for some reason, in this instance the practice is called out when in fact it is not an isolated incident whatsoever.

Indeed; I'm a college professor myself and I've sometimes assigned my own books, though generally in graduate level classes.  One minor difference is that students often have cheap or even free ways of getting academic books (like Interlibrary loan) whereas in this case I think Greg requires a proof of purchase (or so they claim).  Not sure if they can opt for pdfs.  But it's still not unethical and in any case universities make us disclose this info annually.  Additionally, consider the sources: whiny, privileged Leftists on sub-Reddits who generally regard the OSR as a hotbed of "the radical Right," and privileged, indoctrinated, Leftist Canadian college students.  Just another echo chamber.

In World Mythologies a grant provided books for the class because there are so many used throughout the course, therefore students may opt to buy their own, yet the books are provided for them. Another professor wrote his own course book, yet he sells it at cost. And yes, we don't know the specifics of Dr Gillespie's course as far as the book is concerned, it is just those running with a molehill to make into a dramatic mountain, as always.