Quote from: Eric Diaz on June 23, 2023, 09:03:42 AM
2 -  Earning and spending. My PCs are level 5 and don't have much to do with their money, unless I start charging for small expenses, note keeping, etc. At least now it will you start affecting their encumbrance (and they find  cleric willing to cure a curse for a steep price). Conan, Grey Mouser etc. would spend some money drinking and gambling, but I can't force the PCs to do the same. Even Conan didn't buy a kingdom - he took one!

Errrr, there are ways...

Seriously, though, you can drain gold pretty easily without much bookkeeping.  Just demand "upkeep" from the players.  A flat "tax", if you will, that players must pay and that they get to partially determine.  For example, I'll look at all of the mundane weapons, armor, gear, etc. that a player has and round it out in my head to a value that is about 1/5 of the total.  That's what it costs per month to maintain the gear (sharpening, repairing, replacing damaged items, etc.).  If the players aren't up to date with their costs, they get a generic penalty to actions involving gear or they can discard gear up to that value.  Henchmen?  Easy.  Get too late on your payments, and they leave (or stop working).  The big one is "lifestyle."  I pick a general tenor of living that I'll describe to the players (Like "Poor" would be living in a communal room in an Inn, eating gruel with shabby clothes, people look down on you in the streets; or "Wealthy" might be a private room at an Inn; meat, cheese, and wine; and people begin to recognize you and want to associate with you) and then pick a monthly cost for that lifestyle (I usually have 4 or 5 levels).  I always make the cost way more than it should be, and the players don't seem to care.  But, when they are able to move up to their private room, good food, etc., the players see it as a win (even though they are spending treasure on it).  It works well, and requires almost no bookkeeping at all.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on June 22, 2023, 11:40:34 AM
It is obvious to me that improvements are inevitable, especially in a game that was born in a very rough shape like OD&D. However, some games are timeless (e.g., chess), and I'm sure that certain parts of D&D share the same trait.

Worth noting about chess being timeless though is that the goal of chess is not emulating real battles (at least not any more), but technical mastery of the established  ruleset. The rules don't change because the goal is work entirely within those rules.

However, that hasn't stopped people looking for other experiences to alter its mechanics regularly; 3D chess, Glinski's hexagonal chess, chess on a 12x12 board, double chess, infinite chess, masonic (in this case the staggered tile arrangement) and rhombic chess, random draw chess (the king and 15 randomly drawn pieces), peasants revolt, etc.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chess_variants

The only thing that makes chess timeless is the agreement among its players (and tournament organizations) to use the specific set of rules they do. The goal of chess isn't to emulate a real world, it's technical mastery of chess' rules... in essence it's become a thing shaped like itself and that's the only reason it's "timeless."

The motive behind rpgs though is still generally "emulation" of some sort of 'real world' which means all mechanics are at best going to be an approximation of thing they're attempting to emulate and approximation mean you're always going to see fiddling to either attempt to improve the quality of the emulation (more detailed mechanics) or the quantity of emulation (faster to resolve mechanics) and those two will always be in dynamic tension where people will at best find a balance they get a group to agree upon.

A platonically ideal rpg would perfectly emulate an entire setting in real time, but with several quantum leaps in computer development that's going to happen and there's nothing native to ANY edition of any rpg that comes close. Which is why there will never be a "timeless" rpg system or even part of one that is... at best you might achieve a "current best practices" consensus around a few elements.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on June 23, 2023, 09:57:08 AM
Encumbrance weights are generally inflated a bit.  Furthermore, a completely silver dagger would be all but useless for anything except ceremonial functions, and even then would be difficult to maintain.  Think of the silver dagger as "silvered" on the outer surface.  Not that considering both of those points answers all objections, but it does leave quite a bit of wiggle room in the assumptions.

You're right.  Unfortunately, this makes things even worse: you are paying 30 pounds of silver to add a fraction of a pound to your dagger.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 23, 2023, 10:50:01 AM
Errrr, there are ways...

Seriously, though, you can drain gold pretty easily without much bookkeeping.  Just demand "upkeep" from the players.  A flat "tax", if you will, that players must pay and that they get to partially determine.  For example, I'll look at all of the mundane weapons, armor, gear, etc. that a player has and round it out in my head to a value that is about 1/5 of the total.  That's what it costs per month to maintain the gear (sharpening, repairing, replacing damaged items, etc.).  If the players aren't up to date with their costs, they get a generic penalty to actions involving gear or they can discard gear up to that value.  Henchmen?  Easy.  Get too late on your payments, and they leave (or stop working).  The big one is "lifestyle."  I pick a general tenor of living that I'll describe to the players (Like "Poor" would be living in a communal room in an Inn, eating gruel with shabby clothes, people look down on you in the streets; or "Wealthy" might be a private room at an Inn; meat, cheese, and wine; and people begin to recognize you and want to associate with you) and then pick a monthly cost for that lifestyle (I usually have 4 or 5 levels).  I always make the cost way more than it should be, and the players don't seem to care.  But, when they are able to move up to their private room, good food, etc., the players see it as a win (even though they are spending treasure on it).  It works well, and requires almost no bookkeeping at all.

My problem with upkeep is that it is not fun for me or the players (they hate it). Having less treasure would be easier.

But I agree  that dealing with downtime, lifestyle, society to be a good solution. I think I'll do just that! Thanks!

Old school D&D has enough things to spend money on. The problem is my PCs are hoarders.

A good solution I've seen elsewhere is giving XP for money spent. This will give them a reason to drink, gamble, etc. And maybe you can occasionally find a trainer that doubles the amount of XP you get for the money spent.

EDIT: I started a treasure thread to avoid derailing this one.

https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/my-problems-with-old-school-treasure/msg1257427/#msg1257427

Quote from: Chris24601 on June 23, 2023, 11:20:31 AM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on June 22, 2023, 11:40:34 AM
It is obvious to me that improvements are inevitable, especially in a game that was born in a very rough shape like OD&D. However, some games are timeless (e.g., chess), and I'm sure that certain parts of D&D share the same trait.

Worth noting about chess being timeless though is that the goal of chess is not emulating real battles (at least not any more), but technical mastery of the established  ruleset. The rules don't change because the goal is work entirely within those rules.

However, that hasn't stopped people looking for other experiences to alter its mechanics regularly; 3D chess, Glinski's hexagonal chess, chess on a 12x12 board, double chess, infinite chess, masonic (in this case the staggered tile arrangement) and rhombic chess, random draw chess (the king and 15 randomly drawn pieces), peasants revolt, etc.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chess_variants

The only thing that makes chess timeless is the agreement among its players (and tournament organizations) to use the specific set of rules they do. The goal of chess isn't to emulate a real world, it's technical mastery of chess' rules... in essence it's become a thing shaped like itself and that's the only reason it's "timeless."

The motive behind rpgs though is still generally "emulation" of some sort of 'real world' which means all mechanics are at best going to be an approximation of thing they're attempting to emulate and approximation mean you're always going to see fiddling to either attempt to improve the quality of the emulation (more detailed mechanics) or the quantity of emulation (faster to resolve mechanics) and those two will always be in dynamic tension where people will at best find a balance they get a group to agree upon.

A platonically ideal rpg would perfectly emulate an entire setting in real time, but with several quantum leaps in computer development that's going to happen and there's nothing native to ANY edition of any rpg that comes close. Which is why there will never be a "timeless" rpg system or even part of one that is... at best you might achieve a "current best practices" consensus around a few elements.

Well said. There is more to D&D than emulation, however, and if you compare the monsters and magic items between 1e and 5e you'll see that not that much was added. In addition, there are things in D&D that try to emulate fiction rather than real life (e.g., gold).

But yes I agree, emulation can always be improved, and I find little justification for thinking a one-handed sword should weight 6 pounds nowadays, etc..

Quote from: Chris24601 on June 23, 2023, 11:20:31 AM
A platonically ideal rpg would perfectly emulate an entire setting in real time, but with several quantum leaps in computer development that's going to happen and there's nothing native to ANY edition of any rpg that comes close. Which is why there will never be a "timeless" rpg system or even part of one that is... at best you might achieve a "current best practices" consensus around a few elements.

The problem is assuming that is the platonic ideal. That there is even a platonic ideal to being with.

Certainly that kind of setting emulation would be interesting to me, but I know many individuals who are perfectly happy with how classic D&D, D&D 5e, GURPS, and so on emulate the setting.

See we do is a form of entertainment. The only platonic test is one of endurance through time. Many people throughout the world continue to choose to play games like chess, backgammon, etc. without knowing or caring about organized chess play. Just as many people continue to choose to play D&D in all its forms.

We can analyze this to death, figure out all the things one can do with the RPG but at the end of the day it boils down to "it is popular because the vast majority of the hobby likes it." Now in 2033 if some other RPG that is not related to D&D has captured the market share of RPG that D&D currently enjoys, feel free to call what i just said bullshit.  But I am willing to bet that in 2033 that D&D related RPGs will continue to enjoy the same dominance as they do now. Just as in the 2010s it was Pathfinder a closely related RPG to D&D that finally dethroned D&D itself. And it did so on the strength of being perceived as being more true to the spire of D&D than D&D 4e was.

If your character can actually fail, actually die, etc.; then your character is being challenged, and victory or success actually means something.

Quote from: estar on June 23, 2023, 12:52:04 PM
Just as in the 2010s it was Pathfinder a closely related RPG to D&D that finally dethroned D&D itself. And it did so on the strength of being perceived as being more true to the spire of D&D than D&D 4e was.

Thats because it was.

I don't play exclusively OSR games, but most of my OSR experience was in AD&D 2e (only learned later we were using a ton of AD&D 1e stuff interchangeably). Now I've been looking back at B/X and other variants that I did not personally experience growing up. What I like most about TSR-era D&D and modern OSR variants are a few things:

• A real threat of death or other permanent harm.
• Quicker character generation.
• A greater focus on exploration and actual game structure to support that (exploration turn, random encounters, ingenuity solves traps/puzzles, gold for XP).
• Tighter design that's actually developed from a culture of play rather than just inventing stuff in one's head.
• The game designer doesn't speak down to you or try to protect you too much from yourself - it assumes you're intelligent and leaves you room to figure stuff out.
• Content density - there's a ton of great content packed into fairly short books (usually less than 150 pages). Seems like most modern games are competing for higher page counts, and packed to the gills with content that can't justify its pagecount.
• Less game-destroying goodies or entitlements handed out to players compared to modern D&D.
• A general focus on verisimilitude and developing rules to support something resembling a plausible fictional world.
• Culture - the culture is much more open to homebrewing and building bespoke solutions to problems experienced in actual play at the table. Less of an "industrial" feel demanding conformity.
• Stages of play - from desperate, to heroic, to name level. The rules scale reasonably well through these phases (compared to mid/high-level play in modern D&D).
• Formats of play - I like how sandbox, open table, and hex crawls are considered more "normal" in the OSR than the modern narrative/quest-driven adventure style.
• More, higher quality adventures and content coming from the community.

Quote from: Old Aegidius on June 25, 2023, 02:41:03 AM
I don't play exclusively OSR games, but most of my OSR experience was in AD&D 2e (only learned later we were using a ton of AD&D 1e stuff interchangeably). Now I've been looking back at B/X and other variants that I did not personally experience growing up. What I like most about TSR-era D&D and modern OSR variants are a few things:

• A real threat of death or other permanent harm.
• Quicker character generation.
• A greater focus on exploration and actual game structure to support that (exploration turn, random encounters, ingenuity solves traps/puzzles, gold for XP).
• Tighter design that's actually developed from a culture of play rather than just inventing stuff in one's head.
• The game designer doesn't speak down to you or try to protect you too much from yourself - it assumes you're intelligent and leaves you room to figure stuff out.
• Content density - there's a ton of great content packed into fairly short books (usually less than 150 pages). Seems like most modern games are competing for higher page counts, and packed to the gills with content that can't justify its pagecount.
• Less game-destroying goodies or entitlements handed out to players compared to modern D&D.
• A general focus on verisimilitude and developing rules to support something resembling a plausible fictional world.
• Culture - the culture is much more open to homebrewing and building bespoke solutions to problems experienced in actual play at the table. Less of an "industrial" feel demanding conformity.
• Stages of play - from desperate, to heroic, to name level. The rules scale reasonably well through these phases (compared to mid/high-level play in modern D&D).
• Formats of play - I like how sandbox, open table, and hex crawls are considered more "normal" in the OSR than the modern narrative/quest-driven adventure style.
• More, higher quality adventures and content coming from the community.

Great points, especially "Content density"!

Quote from: Eric Diaz on June 23, 2023, 11:35:03 AM

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on June 23, 2023, 09:57:08 AM
Encumbrance weights are generally inflated a bit.  Furthermore, a completely silver dagger would be all but useless for anything except ceremonial functions, and even then would be difficult to maintain.  Think of the silver dagger as "silvered" on the outer surface.  Not that considering both of those points answers all objections, but it does leave quite a bit of wiggle room in the assumptions.

You're right.  Unfortunately, this makes things even worse: you are paying 30 pounds of silver to add a fraction of a pound to your dagger.

Go check what master gunsmiths charge. Real gunsmiths. The ones where you pay $100 to have them change the sights, because if they slip and mess up your slide or sights, they spend $500 refinishing the slide or replacing the sights.

30 silver for a silvered dagger makes complete sense. There is more to master crafts than material costs. You have to charge enough for the project to make money, when you could be doing more inherently lucrative jobs.

Quote from: Old Aegidius on June 25, 2023, 02:41:03 AM
I don't play exclusively OSR games, but most of my OSR experience was in AD&D 2e (only learned later we were using a ton of AD&D 1e stuff interchangeably). Now I've been looking back at B/X and other variants that I did not personally experience growing up. What I like most about TSR-era D&D and modern OSR variants are a few things:

• A real threat of death or other permanent harm.
• Quicker character generation.
• A greater focus on exploration and actual game structure to support that (exploration turn, random encounters, ingenuity solves traps/puzzles, gold for XP).
• Tighter design that's actually developed from a culture of play rather than just inventing stuff in one's head.
• The game designer doesn't speak down to you or try to protect you too much from yourself - it assumes you're intelligent and leaves you room to figure stuff out.
• Content density - there's a ton of great content packed into fairly short books (usually less than 150 pages). Seems like most modern games are competing for higher page counts, and packed to the gills with content that can't justify its pagecount.
• Less game-destroying goodies or entitlements handed out to players compared to modern D&D.
• A general focus on verisimilitude and developing rules to support something resembling a plausible fictional world.
• Culture - the culture is much more open to homebrewing and building bespoke solutions to problems experienced in actual play at the table. Less of an "industrial" feel demanding conformity.
• Stages of play - from desperate, to heroic, to name level. The rules scale reasonably well through these phases (compared to mid/high-level play in modern D&D).
• Formats of play - I like how sandbox, open table, and hex crawls are considered more "normal" in the OSR than the modern narrative/quest-driven adventure style.
• More, higher quality adventures and content coming from the community.

That's one of the best summaries of Old School I've ever read. Your view of the "old school" is much more in alignment with mine than those on, e.g. /r/OSR.

Quote from: Ruprecht on June 22, 2023, 09:46:50 PM

Although I agree with, some folks are really drawn to art which is the one thing most OSR games don't take as seriously. I think Pathfinder covers probably explains a large number of sales (that and being 3.6).

Yeah no argument there. I bought The One Ring because I love Tolkien and the production values are outstanding, but think the game sorts sucks. I then bought the second edition for the same reasons, knowing full well it wouldn't be any better...

Quote from: Eric Diaz on June 25, 2023, 09:43:14 AM
Great points, especially "Content density"!

Yup. 1e PHB is like 120 pages, 2e PHB is like 250 (but mostly spell descriptions). 99% useful content. 3e, 4e, and 5e are all 300 pages (and you'll never get away with playing just core with the current culture). 3e was the high water mark for WotC content density and it's just gotten worse. For me personally reading 5e content is like pulling teeth. It's somehow dense enough that it's slow to read and filler enough that it's uninteresting.

Even the modern games I enjoy churn out these 400+ page monstrosities now with only like 50-60 pages of important, usable stuff and the rest is all filler. Obviously some OSR stuff has a lot of filler too (especially artpunk stuff), but the OSR doesn't seem to inflate pagecount just because it's expected of them. IMO a proper, complete game should top out somewhere between 150-250 pages maximum (I don't mind expansion stuff that's actually optional). If a game is less than 100 pages I'm skeptical that it's a complete and functional game, and if it's more than 300 it better be an amazing game to convince me to buy it and read all that.

Quote from: amacris on June 25, 2023, 08:06:36 PM
That's one of the best summaries of Old School I've ever read. Your view of the "old school" is much more in alignment with mine than those on, e.g. /r/OSR.

Thanks! There's a lot of cargo cultism going on in the mainstream - performing the rituals and invoking the names of the old-school while still retaining all the modern campaign structures, adornments, and cultural assumptions. It's a doomed proposition IMO. I'm working on my own game and even though it's a totally divergent ruleset (non-d20), I feel like I'll be able to capture some of these OSR principles and structure better than a lot of popular OSR products I've seen marketed as such.

Quote from: Old Aegidius on June 26, 2023, 02:04:04 AM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on June 25, 2023, 09:43:14 AM
Great points, especially "Content density"!

Yup. 1e PHB is like 120 pages, 2e PHB is like 250 (but mostly spell descriptions). 99% useful content. 3e, 4e, and 5e are all 300 pages (and you'll never get away with playing just core with the current culture). 3e was the high water mark for WotC content density and it's just gotten worse. For me personally reading 5e content is like pulling teeth. It's somehow dense enough that it's slow to read and filler enough that it's uninteresting.

Even the modern games I enjoy churn out these 400+ page monstrosities now with only like 50-60 pages of important, usable stuff and the rest is all filler. Obviously some OSR stuff has a lot of filler too (especially artpunk stuff), but the OSR doesn't seem to inflate pagecount just because it's expected of them. IMO a proper, complete game should top out somewhere between 150-250 pages maximum (I don't mind expansion stuff that's actually optional). If a game is less than 100 pages I'm skeptical that it's a complete and functional game, and if it's more than 300 it better be an amazing game to convince me to buy it and read all that.

Quote from: amacris on June 25, 2023, 08:06:36 PM
That's one of the best summaries of Old School I've ever read. Your view of the "old school" is much more in alignment with mine than those on, e.g. /r/OSR.

Thanks! There's a lot of cargo cultism going on in the mainstream - performing the rituals and invoking the names of the old-school while still retaining all the modern campaign structures, adornments, and cultural assumptions. It's a doomed proposition IMO. I'm working on my own game and even though it's a totally divergent ruleset (non-d20), I feel like I'll be able to capture some of these OSR principles and structure better than a lot of popular OSR products I've seen marketed as such.

Great summary of old school content. The Moldvay Introductory set is a complete game covering play to level 3 in just 64 pages. For me, that sets the standard of what can be accomplished in quite a bit less than 100 pages. It is my favorite presentation of the D&D game in part due to its brevity. I read the entire rulebook cover to cover at age 10 and it didn't take all day. The art was very inspiring as well. I just don't have the time anymore to slog through hundreds of pages of rules just to play a game. I have done so in the past and found that my actual play enjoyment at the table was not enhanced by doing so and sometimes actually diminished.

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 23, 2023, 07:27:27 AM
...
It's number-fishing, not dungeon-crawling. Blades in the Dark is the current TTRPG Hotness and here's how the core mechanic works:

QuoteEvery action you take has the same odds but the positioning varies from controlled, to risky, to desperate. The worse the position, the more you have to lose. Then, before any dice are rolled, the GM states what the effect of this action might be. If everyone is agreed to the action, the positioning, and the outcome, the dice are rolled.

Oh really? So I can't just roll one die and get on with things? I need multiple dice, degrees of success AND failure, a GM hovering over my decisions like Helicopter-Mom™ and finally, the consent of the group just to perform one action.

...

---

---

Quote from: Eric Diaz on June 23, 2023, 11:40:37 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on June 23, 2023, 11:20:31 AM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on June 22, 2023, 11:40:34 AM
It is obvious to me that improvements are inevitable, especially in a game that was born in a very rough shape like OD&D. However, some games are timeless (e.g., chess), and I'm sure that certain parts of D&D share the same trait.

Worth noting about chess being timeless though is that the goal of chess is not emulating real battles (at least not any more), but technical mastery of the established  ruleset. The rules don't change because the goal is work entirely within those rules.

However, that hasn't stopped people looking for other experiences to alter its mechanics regularly; 3D chess, Glinski's hexagonal chess, chess on a 12x12 board, double chess, infinite chess, masonic (in this case the staggered tile arrangement) and rhombic chess, random draw chess (the king and 15 randomly drawn pieces), peasants revolt, etc.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chess_variants

The only thing that makes chess timeless is the agreement among its players (and tournament organizations) to use the specific set of rules they do. The goal of chess isn't to emulate a real world, it's technical mastery of chess' rules... in essence it's become a thing shaped like itself and that's the only reason it's "timeless."

The motive behind rpgs though is still generally "emulation" of some sort of 'real world' which means all mechanics are at best going to be an approximation of thing they're attempting to emulate and approximation mean you're always going to see fiddling to either attempt to improve the quality of the emulation (more detailed mechanics) or the quantity of emulation (faster to resolve mechanics) and those two will always be in dynamic tension where people will at best find a balance they get a group to agree upon.

A platonically ideal rpg would perfectly emulate an entire setting in real time, but with several quantum leaps in computer development that's going to happen and there's nothing native to ANY edition of any rpg that comes close. Which is why there will never be a "timeless" rpg system or even part of one that is... at best you might achieve a "current best practices" consensus around a few elements.

Well said. There is more to D&D than emulation, however, and if you compare the monsters and magic items between 1e and 5e you'll see that not that much was added. In addition, there are things in D&D that try to emulate fiction rather than real life (e.g., gold).

But yes I agree, emulation can always be improved, and I find little justification for thinking a one-handed sword should weight 6 pounds nowadays, etc..

---

---

Quote from: Jam The MF on June 23, 2023, 10:14:42 PM
If your character can actually fail, actually die, etc.; then your character is being challenged, and victory or success actually means something.

---

---

The entire design philosophy of the Forge seems to appease the fear of "touch move touch take", probably the best carry over from wargaming into roleplaying. Blades in the Dark took it one step further and opened player decision to comittee approval, which is basically letting someone else backseat drive your own character, let alone by the flashback mechanic: "I solve the problem by preventing it from happening," essentially the unlimited wishes spell mechanic.

Having something to lose in the mechanic given above doesn't really provide any solution the issue of the Mary Sue character design telos anyway.

Imagine a chess, or even a poker tournament played online, where all players have their own undo button, which consequently undoes the last move of your opponents. You could limit the number of times players are allowed to click that button, but you're not watching a tournament once the players have the ability to refute the game itself.