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

.

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. 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.