Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 13, 2024, 03:25:54 PM
Instead, it works a whole lot better if there is some interest in the location, arrangement of the rooms, things to hide behind, etc.  Sometimes, even if this wouldn't exactly make sense in a medieval location.  If the GM gets in the habit of doing this, then sometimes the players will come up with things that are good for that location, but they wouldn't even expect to work elsewhere.

This is a good point about environment.

I find that fire-and-forget is also pretty key mechanical nudge toward creative spell use. When every spell is always available, solutions requiring creative spell use are much, much rarer in my experience.

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 13, 2024, 11:23:03 AM

I wound up giving my Dolmenwood players their Constitution attribute score as HP at level one. Might have been overkill, but they'd never have survived the first adventure without it. Dolmenwood characters are kinda weedy even by OSR standards.

As a new DM in the OSR space, the Dolemenwood characters don't seem any weaker than standard OSE Advanced characters or am I missing something?

I will keep the idea of using 1e HP progression in the back of my pocket if I feel it's required.  So far the group seems OK.

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 12, 2024, 10:31:31 PM
Gotcha. Yeah, there's a definite culture shock for players coming from 3e/4e/5e/Pathfinder to OSR games. Some OSR games mitigate it a bit by having chunkier classes and more options (Fantastic Heroes and Witchery for example), but I don't blame a player for feeling a bit deflated at how limiting a lot of OSR classes can be. For my money, OSR games are actually more difficult to DM than newer ones. The lesser mechanical depth on the player side requires you to make up for it with more engaging scenarios and non-mechanical challenges.

I would be keen to see some kind of write-up of how you ended up doing it, even if it's just a workflow example.  I am falling back into an adventure path because of time constraints.

Regarding the other comments/commentators, yeah, this all makes sense.  I think I am just rusty as an OSR DM.  In defence of my players, they are fairly creative since I ran 5e in such a way as to make it more like 1e.  So that helped restrain some of the craziness of high-level play in 5e (all my campaigns were 1 to 20).  But running anything above level 6 or so becomes progressively more exhausting let alone at level 20 with 8 PCs.

I think the big gap is they are not used to hex crawls, and I had never run a big one before for them, except for the one that was in Tomb of Annihilation, which left a bad taste in everyone's mouth.  So when I dumped a 600-hex crawl on them and said have at it, it wasn't exciting for them it was daunting, and bad memories of Tomb came back. So that's on me as the DM.

In fact, it's all on me since 5 of my 6 regular players I taught to play (my family)! Having said that, I do have older veteran players who attend, but they are not consistent. It's always good to have them to help steer the party more towards creative thinking and trying things out.

I also don't think it's just 5e; video games have affected younger generations in how they see D&D. And in retrospect, the other mistake I made is I didn't stick with BECMI/AD&D but jumped to 5e, which set a different baseline and set of expectations more in-line with video games.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 13, 2024, 02:34:29 PM

Quote from: Persimmon on February 13, 2024, 01:48:17 PM
I do think a lot of players of later (post-TSR) editions of D&D have been conditioned in a totally different way in terms of approach and problem solving.  Instead of using your limited abilities to creatively solve challenges, like, for example, casting create water in the villain's throat or casting silence 15' radius on an object and tossing that at the enemy caster's feet, they're always looking for specific situations to use their cool abilities or signature moves.  I saw this firsthand in a game where all of us except one (the son of one of the other players) were 30 plus year D&D vets.  The whole time we played the teenage kid was just reading the rulebooks, trying to wait for scenarios when he could use very specific powerful abilities.  So rather than adjust tactics to situations, they wait for the situation to fit their preferred tactics, if that makes sense.

Players do what they are conditioned to do.  A GM can lead them to water, but can't make them drink.  Of course, video games put a giant thumb on the scale, too, that has to be overcome. 

It can be overcome. I get younger players (and some older ones that never have known any different) to change.  But you can't expect it to work exactly the same way it did 40-50 years ago.  Instead, I've found it helpful to be explicit, both negative and positive.  No, you can't roll on your "history" skill to figure something out without investigating.  No you can't roll "perception" to see if you can discover something until I call for a roll.  Repeat the current scene info.  Ask again "What do you do?"  If they are really stuck, say, "Would you like to do X, or Y, or Z or something else?"  (Make sure to include the "something else").  Stay after it, and the light bulb will go on.  Once it goes on, it pretty much stays on, with maybe a little positive reinforcement.

There are some habits so bad an ingrained that you can't break them by giving alternatives and waiting for action.  You have to push.

Indeed, the conditioning of past experience is strong but it can be overcome with enough patience and invitation to laterally explore the world. Hence why descriptions of the interactable world around them, and asking as you say, '[...]X, Y, Z, or something else?' is so important. We are asking players to step out of the safe AND see it as an opportunity. It's a hard job to coax, but oh so rewarding when it happens.

Quote from: solomani on February 13, 2024, 06:38:50 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 13, 2024, 11:23:03 AM

I wound up giving my Dolmenwood players their Constitution attribute score as HP at level one. Might have been overkill, but they'd never have survived the first adventure without it. Dolmenwood characters are kinda weedy even by OSR standards.

As a new DM in the OSR space, the Dolemenwood characters don't seem any weaker than standard OSE Advanced characters or am I missing something?

OSE is probably the OSR game I am the least familiar with, but Dolemwood classes mostly have a step lower hit die compared to their DCC or Castles & Crusades equivalent. They seem to have slower attack bonus progression as well, and there's no weapon multi-attack ability for fighters. The available spells seem to be a bit less fighty to me, too, and healing spells less readily available.

Quote from: solomani on February 13, 2024, 06:38:50 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 12, 2024, 10:31:31 PM
Gotcha. Yeah, there's a definite culture shock for players coming from 3e/4e/5e/Pathfinder to OSR games. Some OSR games mitigate it a bit by having chunkier classes and more options (Fantastic Heroes and Witchery for example), but I don't blame a player for feeling a bit deflated at how limiting a lot of OSR classes can be. For my money, OSR games are actually more difficult to DM than newer ones. The lesser mechanical depth on the player side requires you to make up for it with more engaging scenarios and non-mechanical challenges.

I would be keen to see some kind of write-up of how you ended up doing it, even if it's just a workflow example.  I am falling back into an adventure path because of time constraints.

I guess it depends. If you mean how to ease 5e players into the OSR, I'm probably not the guy to ask. I'm one of the younger people in the group I play with, and since I'm playing online, anyone who comes into the game is already on board for playing OSR stuff.

If you mean how I pick out modules and use/convert them for my game, then I got plenty to say: I started out for this campaign skim-reading a bunch of modules from systems I thought might match up well with Dolmenwood. I'm lucky in that I have a ton of pdfs that have just accumulated on my computer over time, but if you ask for specific recommendations around here, you can usually get pointed in the right direction.

First priority is setting compatibility. Dolmenwood is pretty specific tone-wise, with the whole medieval England/catholic church/elves and fairies thing, so right out of the gate you can write off a lot of modules. I'm willing to do a little re-skinning, but if a module focuses on fighting a band of orcs in the snowy mountains, I'll just disregard it.  Fortunately, the more historically authentic, fairytale tone has been pretty popular with OSR games, so there's a lot of Modules that fit it. Plus there's games like Pendragon and Dragon Warriors that are specifically designed for it. I advanced the tech level of Dolmenwood to a late renaissance/early modern one, so I can bring in some material from Warhammer Fantasy and Lamentations, too.

Within that framework, I'm trying to avoid certain things, particularly modules that require a very specific political/social dynamic or location to make sense. I also prefer modules with some amount of a character/investigation focus, rather than pure "go here, kill this, get the thing" adventures. Personally I think the best modules in any system are ones that set up a relatively complicated situation, with lots of different players and motivations (and preferably a timeline), and then drop the players into the works. That's partially just personal preference, but they're also easier to stitch together to make a campaign out of.

Once I have a module I think makes a decent candidate, I put it on an excel spreadsheet that categorizes by source system, recommended level, environment, and what kind of quest hook is recommended (i.e., is there a quest-giver or is it something the PCs just blunder into). The idea is that if my players decide to go explore the High Wold, I can look for an on-level adventure that takes place in farmland or downland, and then look at how to drop it in their path.

In terms of practice, I try to have two adventures sort of half-prepared at any time, based on what direction I think the players are going. That way I can keep up enough player options without getting caught totally unprepared. I also advance roll random encounters between sessions, so I've always got some content ready to go if I need to fill time.

On the subject of random encounters, you want to have as few "a troll attacks you in the woods" encounters as possible. Dolmenwood has a table for what the NPCs are doing when you encounter them. Even without the table, it's best to decide that for your encounters. Even if it ends in a fight, an encounter with some roleplay potential can serve as a mini-adventure by itself. There's a trick I've used in prior campaigns, though not in this one, that I call "local legends". The idea is that you write up a bunch of mini-adventures, just one or two encounters long (kind of a midway point between a random encounter and a full adventure), that can be dropped pretty much anywhere on the campaign map. The way I did it before was that whenever the players stopped in an inn or tavern they had a chance to get told about some event or local myth  that they could then decide if they wanted to go investigate. It's a great way to fill time while giving the illusion of the setting being full of stuff going on, and my players pretty much always went for it. If you can get a hold of the book The Atlas of Magical Britain by Janet and Colin Bond, it's chock full of little bits of local folklore you can use for mini-adventures.

I actually do most of my rules conversion in real-time while running the module. If you're running another OSR game or something with a similar enough structure, you shouldn't need to do more than tune a couple of numbers. THAC0 can be quick-converted on the fly by just inverting the numbers. For games like DCC that use a For/Ref/Will save system, I usually come up with a fixed save target of somewhere between 12-15 and roll NPC saves against that using their listed modifiers and common sense for which one fits a given effect. For games where the stats don't match up as neatly, I don't really try to convert, so much as just restat the NPC for the game I'm playing. This is a lot easier with human NPCs, of course, but you can do it with monsters by referencing comparable power-level monsters in the system you're converting to. I don't rewrite the module, just put my homebrew stats on a word document and keep it open alongside. For stuff like skill tests, as often as not you can skip them if your players make the right decisions. If not, I'll decide between the built in skills system Dolmenwood has, or just rolling under the appropriate attribute. Generally I do roll under the attribute if the check should be pretty easy, and the Dolmenwood skills if it should be more difficult. 

Beyond that it's really just a question of being willing to change the module to make it fit the campaign. As an example, I just got done running a Warhammer Fantasy adventure. One of the subplots involves a lawyer who is an ex-chaos cultist being blackmailed by his former compatriots. There's no stats for a lawyer in Dolmenwood, and no chaos cults to speak of, so now he's a magician who is being hounded by Druun agents over a magic item he stole from them. I didn't have to change anything else about how the module plays out, and I can use the magic item as a McGuffin for further adventures. It also pays when reading multiple adventures to look for NPCs that can be combined between them. In the aforementioned WFRP module, there's a countess who's being targeted by an assassin. In one of the DCC modules on my list, there's a kidnapped princess. So I made it that the princess is her ward, and the kidnappers were trying to assassinate her to prevent her interfering. That sort of thing.

Quote from: solomani on February 13, 2024, 06:38:50 PM
I think the big gap is they are not used to hex crawls, and I had never run a big one before for them, except for the one that was in Tomb of Annihilation, which left a bad taste in everyone's mouth.  So when I dumped a 600-hex crawl on them and said have at it, it wasn't exciting for them it was daunting, and bad memories of Tomb came back. So that's on me as the DM.

Frankly I'm iffy on a pure hexcrawl working on it's own in any case. I watched a couple actual plays of Dolmenwood before I started on it, and both of them were doing the same as I am (and it sounds like you were), using the hexmap as a framework to slot adventures into. Hexcrawl campaigns I've played in have done the same. The problem IMO is that hexcrawling by itself doesn't offer any incentives beyond gold and XP. In my experience, a surprisingly large number of players are not motivated by that. A well-written hexcrawl will have lots of potential for adventure and intrigue written into its hex descriptions and encounter lists, but a) it demands a huge amount of improv from the DM to keep it interesting, and b) it can be hard to get to that point if your player's don't feel they have a reason to go hex-crawling in the first place.

I suppose you can chalk it up to player conditioning to an extent. Videogame sandboxes have that "go here to get a quest then go do the quest" formatting, and people have gotten used to it. But again I don't really blame people. I also am not much motivated by imaginary money, and prefer a clear objective to just bumblefucking around the countryside looking for something to do. 

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 16, 2024, 04:53:49 PM
OSE is probably the OSR game I am the least familiar with, but Dolemwood classes mostly have a step lower hit die compared to their DCC or Castles & Crusades equivalent. They seem to have slower attack bonus progression as well, and there's no weapon multi-attack ability for fighters. The available spells seem to be a bit less fighty to me, too, and healing spells less readily available.

It seems about on par in terms of HPs as BECMI/BX, but, yeah, spells seem a bit "Weak".  For everyone except the enchnater, I went back to just using the OSE (and the expanded list from Labyrinth Lord) for spells.  Easier when someone says "I cast sleep" instead of "vapors of dream"

Quote from: solomani on February 13, 2024, 06:38:50 PM
If you mean how I pick out modules and use/convert them for my game, then I got plenty to say: I started out for this campaign skim-reading a bunch of modules from systems I thought might match up well with Dolmenwood. I'm lucky in that I have a ton of pdfs that have just accumulated on my computer over time, but if you ask for specific recommendations around here, you can usually get pointed in the right direction.

Yep, the latter, for example, which actual adventures did you use, and how, if any, did you weave them into a story?  Thanks for elucidating.  There is an excel sheet floating around on the internet with a long list of Dolmenwood-compatible OSR adventures (that is, fairy tale adventures, ones that would fit in easily).  If you don't have that I can look for the link and share it.

Quote from: solomani on February 13, 2024, 06:38:50 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 16, 2024, 04:53:49 PM
If you mean how I pick out modules and use/convert them for my game, then I got plenty to say: I started out for this campaign skim-reading a bunch of modules from systems I thought might match up well with Dolmenwood. I'm lucky in that I have a ton of pdfs that have just accumulated on my computer over time, but if you ask for specific recommendations around here, you can usually get pointed in the right direction.

Yep, the latter, for example, which actual adventures did you use, and how, if any, did you weave them into a story?  Thanks for elucidating.  There is an excel sheet floating around on the internet with a long list of Dolmenwood-compatible OSR adventures (that is, fairy tale adventures, ones that would fit in easily).  If you don't have that I can look for the link and share it.

So my campaign is still pretty young, so the only modules I've used so far are:

--Prince Charming: Re-Animator (Dungeon Crawl Classics). I'll be running the sequel, Creeping Beauties of the Wood, but I'm holding it for a little bit.
--A Rough Night at the Three Feathers (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay)
--Bride of the Darkened Rider (Dungeon Crawl Classics)

The next module on deck is The Queen of Elfland's Son (Also DCC)

If I could recommend one module product for Dolmenwood, it'd be the book Sleeping Gods for the Dragon Warriors RPG. Dragon Warriors is not OSR, but it is very similar in tone to Dolmenwood, and it's another class-based 80s game, so it's an easy conversion. The book presents a 7 adventure mini-campaign, and 5 or 6 of those adventures could be easily slotted into Dolmenwood by just changing a few character names. The only reason I'm not using it is I used most of the adventures running Dragon Warriors for the same players a year ago. A lot of the material in the Elven Crystals and Prince of Darkness adventure books would probably work as well.

Another adventure I ran for my Dragon Warriors campaign which would work extremely well for Dolmenwood is the Pendragon adventure The Adventure of the Fairie Road, which is in the book Tales of Magic and Miracles. Several of the adventures in that book would work well for Dolmenwood.

Other modules on my list of candidates include:
--The Witch of Monte Rosa (OSRIC)
--Lands of the Dark Wicche (Oneshotadventures.com)
--A Thorn in the Side (For Gold and Glory)
--Of Beasts and Men (For Gold and Glory)
--The Sepulchre of Seven (Indy, but statted for OSE)
--Hell Rides to Hallit (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay)
--Come Drown With Me (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay)
--The Siege of Walen Temple (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay)
--The Haunting Horror (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay)
--The Adventure of the Rosebriar Knight (Pendragon)
--Red Vengeance (Savage Worlds Solomon Kane)
--The Cursed Chateau (Lamentations of the Flame Princess)
--Tales of the Scarecrow (Lamentations of the Flame Princess)
--No Rest for the Wicked (Lamentations of the Flame Princess)
--No Salvation for Witches (Lamentations of the Flame Princess)
--The Knight's Tale (Dragon Warriors)
--The Black Monastery (Swords & Wizardry)


If you can find that list, it'd certainly save me a lot of work, and I'd be grateful.

Cool, thanks.  Here is the list:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bR8j8akOPQ5qZMcRlvuf-cbGaAo9kW6q/edit#gid=91902735

Another thing to remember about OSR is that it consciously emulates the early D&D experience and Garry Gygax HATED magic users as PCs and wanted to actively discourage them--by making them suck most heinously until very high level. If I recall correctly he had to be badgered into including the option at all, feeling that PCs using significant magic spoiled the mystery of it. He was very invested in early pulp fantasy where the heroes were always fighting men.

Yep. Makes sense. Especially when you see pulp stories like Conan where magic is always bad.  Or at least deeply untrustworthy.

Quote from: solomani on February 18, 2024, 03:05:07 AM
Cool, thanks.  Here is the list:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bR8j8akOPQ5qZMcRlvuf-cbGaAo9kW6q/edit#gid=91902735

Thanks. Some crossover with my list there, but lots of new stuff to look into. Should be a big help.

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 18, 2024, 01:20:32 PM
Another thing to remember about OSR is that it consciously emulates the early D&D experience and Garry Gygax HATED magic users as PCs and wanted to actively discourage them--by making them suck most heinously until very high level. If I recall correctly he had to be badgered into including the option at all, feeling that PCs using significant magic spoiled the mystery of it. He was very invested in early pulp fantasy where the heroes were always fighting men.

He was kind of right. Readily available player magic is antithetical to trying to replicate the tone of Howardian or Leiberian fantasy. On the other hand, you could strip the Magic-User class out of D&D entirely, and the players would still have tons of magic at their disposal (not the least of which being Clerics). And intentionally making one of your core classes bad is possibly the worst of all solutions to the issue. 

It also depends on which game is used.   Many alternate magic systems exist that won't have this issue.

Palladium Books uses magic points instead of spells slots.   You can spam ranged attacks with magic, but only for so many times. 

Also, Palladium magic was more about crowd control and circumventing obstacles.  Got a big river to cross?  One Wall of Ice spell, and instant ice barge big enough for everyone and the horses & carts. 

OSR is tough because simple unlimited use cantrips are not in these OSR games.  I've only seen it once in Olde Swords Reign, and there are two. Prestidigitations (weak telekinesis), and a small fireball (1D3 damage). 

It's one of the reasons I gravitate to lesser know games.  I don't enjoy Vancian magic. 

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 20, 2024, 08:09:46 PM
He was kind of right. Readily available player magic is antithetical to trying to replicate the tone of Howardian or Leiberian fantasy. On the other hand, you could strip the Magic-User class out of D&D entirely, and the players would still have tons of magic at their disposal (not the least of which being Clerics).

I definitely feel this, and it's only gotten worse as editions go on. Even just in 3e, because classes are supposed to be at least kinda balanced, sorcerers and the like get a significant amount of magic out of the gates, and being able to pick your class at character creation makes just having magic as simple as picking your character's clothes. It makes the whole setting feel different, since magic is made so mundane. I like the approach of making wizards total scrubs early on, and having to earn the good stuff.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on February 21, 2024, 01:03:14 PM
Also, Palladium magic was more about crowd control and circumventing obstacles

Utility magic is where it's at. I'd be fine with the only damaging spell anybody gets until medium to high level is magic missile, which is basically just an unerring crossbow. Everything else should just be utility.

Don't forget bows. You can always shoot an arrow.

Two of my favorite games use non-Vancian magic.

Pocket Fantasy wizards have two things going for them. They get 2 spells per fight, but are limited to the six "combat spells" listed in the rules.  However, each new fight gives them two more uses.  Second, they start play with a wimpy staff of ranged attacks with unlimited ammo.

Dungeons & Delvers Dice Pool wizards all start with a fireball spell, but it's no more effective than a throwing dagger.  If you put a wizard vs an archer, the bow and arrow is twice the range and double the damage, with the only wizard advantage being unlimited ammo. 

But, as I said before, and Tenbones also just brought up, bring along armor and conventional weapons.  You can use them after the magic is gone dry.