There are a few that are good but yeah. A whole lot are bad. Probably a higher bad rate than TTRPG kickstarter as a whole.
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This sounds fun, yeah.
There were some other fun early ones (the fishing one) and like Cy_borg but yeah, at this point, it’s very diminishing returns.
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When someone tried to make miniatures rules for MB, the writing was on the wall in terms of missing the point.
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I think cy borg was written by the original guys but I’m suspicious and steered clear
I grabbed a cheap distressed copy of the miniature rules as a streamlined stand alone thing because yeah, who would try to over complicate the base game with that, and I was hoping it would be as stripped down (rule wise and financially) an approach to war gaming as the original was to RPGs. But that book is so uncool too. There’s a running joke about South Park underpants gnomes and the vampire perk is straight up uncleverly called “what we do in the shadows.”
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Cyborg is good
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It was. It’s pretty good.
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To be fair to the kickstarter folks doing Mork Borg kickstarter stuff
Mork Borg was one of the first OSRs to piggy back off the “fuck it we’re going super open” movement after D&D decided to be obviously corporate. Their 3rd party punk rock attitude was all about getting people to make weird garbage for them, and the “low bar for aesthetics” also gave a lot of people confidence.
I just want to point out that I appreciate that stuff despite cringe and bad feels.
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In the AD&D 1e campaign I play in, we still talk about our low-level encounter with a SNAKE IN A WELL.
OSR D&D combat gets plenty interesting once characters get enough magic items and spells. Each character will accumulate such a random assortment of magic items that even plain old fighters can be interesting to play in combat. The fighter with boots of levitation and a decanter of endless water has a lot different options from the fighter with a flying carpet and ring of invisibility.
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Yeah. OSR is like playing Zelda without Nintendo bumpers
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it honestly didn’t occur to me til recently that the crux of the shift in progression from third and beyond was shifting the random acquisition of magic items out with a regular schedule of feats.
At the time I sort of just saw it as spells for everyone but in retrospect they seem to fit the niche that treasure used to.
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Index Card RPG really could’ve killed it if they weren’t so themeless. Like… I know it comes with “complete” settings, but with so much of it fleshed out it actually feels agnostic and flavorless in the end.
TLDR ICRPG might be the best dungeon crawl rpg game system
It wasn’t always random. When I used to run 2e, I’d definitely have the PCs chasing down rumors of specific items that they were jonesing for. Though one thing I really liked about it was that items could just sort of go away sometimes, like oops you dropped the wand. Maybe you’ll have better luck with the next one.
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Oh totally, I don’t think I ever actually used those treasure class tables to determine how much of what sort of object I’m rolling per monster but I got the sense that most people did.
In the 1e DMG there is a chart that is hated by many a player, the Saving Throw Matrix for Magical and Non-Magical Items. My DM requires rolls on this chart when a save vs a highly destructive attack is failed, like fireballs, lightning bolts, etc. I’ve lost a number of magical items this way, including several wands.
Although it is painful to lose a valuable item, the chart makes the game better in my opinion. It allows DMs to hand out magic a little more liberally without unbalancing the game. And if you play with the intended slow pace of advancement, you will find a lot of magic in the many adventures it takes to gain a level.
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I think OSR combat can be interesting without magic items, it requires both the DM and the players to be pretty engaged and creative though, as stated earlier, if it’s played like a videogame it is going to be pretty boring (as 5e tends to be anyway, even with special abilities and all). Because it’s so lethal, you shouldn’t really be just be sitting toe-to-toe trading blows if you have any choice in the matter. Running away, setting ambushes, fighting “dirty” (everybody should be constantly trying to trip people, throw big rocks from high ground, etc.) should be the order of the day.
I don’t like following the classical approach to magic items though. I don’t think in my current campaign there’s ever been a simple “+1” of anything, every magic item is unique and had various odd effects to it, and when the characters were fifth level, I think they had three magic items, a dagger that could also hit ghosts, a suit of scalemail that allowed you to swim as though you weren’t encumbered, and a toe ring that put anybody who puts it on to sleep.
ETA: The canonical D&D magic items are also far too combat-centric, eye emm ohh any world with magic in it, the magic items should mostly be weird little charms that mostly fulfill common needs, like basic divinations, or a rock that makes water boil faster, or something that tells you when somebody is lying, etc.
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Before or after the sphincter
both player characters survived the end of swamp song, so i got a copy o tales of the crescent city, a collection of seven new orleans call of cthulhu adventures. tonight we started the first, entitled tell me, have you seen the yellow sign?
call of cthulhu is just as fun to run as it is to play! both players (one playing a disgraced former preist, the other an archaeology professor) are enjoying getting their characters into situations both plot- and character- driven, and i’m having fun knowing what horrible things they’re doomed to endure in their immediate futures.
the highlight for me, though, was ending the session with “as you’re driving though the city, and it’s gotten dark now, you notice glowing yellow symbols on a lot of the mardi gras decorations that have been put up everywhere”
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tonight, i ran the dare for a different group, and it was great! everyone enjoyed it, and the story was fun and full of gross and creepy moments
unfortunately there’s no more published adventures for this 80s kids call of cthulhu setting, so if we play again, i’m gonna have to come up with something myself
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Did a little thing with this. The 24XX system is simple enough, and the setting of post civil war Florida but not quite is pretty compelling. It’s very much the vibe of the film Annihilation in the late nineteenth century. Since the text really does not want to tie it explicitly to the real world beyond a the tech level and the feel of how weird going into the everglades can be things aren’t really tethered to explicit time periods or “America” as an entity. That means that it doesn’t have hooks like being contemporary to Dracula or reconstruction, and it feels a bit weaker for it but it’s still a great little game for what it is
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