Basements & Beards- Analogue Gaming Thread

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

I'm sure that's a more Bible-accurate portrayal of Jehova, anyways.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

So I was going to finally sperg more about Star Fleet Battles, but there's some obnoxious little development I feel I have to tackle:
Shadowdork Shadowdark

Hey, look. It's D&D clone No. 1376. But thanks to a combination of at least one paid reviewer, various other reviewers that are the writer's BFF, and various fortunate connections even Forbes is heralding it as the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Naturally nothing here is as new or as innovative as the writer claims.

In this game, torches only last one hour of real time. The characters (and players) must make decisions quickly, or they'll run out of precious light!

Real-time durations for my in-universe effect. Oh joy. Also a clear ripoff of the Stress Explosion mechanic in the far superior Maid RPG ("stress" is the damage you can take in that game, and if you take too much stress your maid character has to freak the fuck out for as many real-time minutes as she needs to vent off the stress).

A few other features include: 

• The four core classes: fighter, priest, thief, wizard
• A d20-based, roll-high system
• No darkvision — total darkness is dangerous 
• Treasure grants XP, and tracking it is dead simple
• Roll-to-cast spells — magic is exciting and risky
• Simple distances (close, near, far)
• Monster morale and reaction rolls
• Always-on initiative — time is easy to track
• The six classic stats (3d6 in order) 
• No skills — just ability checks and advantage/disadvantage
• Separate ancestry and class
• Randomized character class abilities — emergent character growth!
• Low hit points — fast and deadly combat
• Simple encumbrance (gear slots)

>four classes and separate races
Oh, so this is a clone of OD&D instead of yet another clone of B/X. Also why are "four core classes" and "separate ancestry and class" so far apart? Whether or not you have "race and class" or "race as class" is by far the most important core distinction of your OSR game.

>spellcasting can fail
Oh boy, I totally haven't seen this before. Except I have. Even D&D had that in the original Psionics rules.
Also D&D spellcaster fanboys hate having their favorite classes gimped like that.

>everything is roll-high
So even the AC is ascending, eh? This was an optional rule for Swords & Wizardry (one of the first OD&D clones), and converting any OSR title to be always roll-high is trivial.

>no darkvision
I give you that it's weird af for everyone but humans to have at least low-light vision. Srsly almost everyone has that shit.
Fuck, even 4e axed Darkvision for the most part (though it replaced it with low-light vision).

>treasure as XP, no skills, low HP, monster moral & reaction rolls
That's all old shit, mate. The only thing new here is that the XP values are smaller and less granular.

>always-on initiative
What they mean here is that you have an initiative order when doing dungeon crawling even outside of combat (which I'm pretty sure some older edition or two already did), and during combat you don't re-roll your initiative every round (older editions like those re-rolls, but it's trivial to houserule).

>inventory slots
That has already been a thing in houserules and clones. It's just about making those weight ratings less granular because counting up all the various pounds you carry is lame.

>randomized character class abilities
Oh joy, so instead of getting class abilities in a fixed order, you just roll on a table. I'm pretty sure this is how Blood Bowl and Mordheim do character advancement, but even there you have more customization options since there are multiple tables you can pick from.
Since you just roll on the same table this also means there are no high-level abilities for non-spellcasters. It's just cumulative bonuses for muggles.
Even worse is that the table uses a 2d6 roll, aka it uses a bell-curve distribution, aka certain class abilities are way more likely to be rolled.
And wtf do you mean with "emergent character growth"? Random-ass class abilities just mean I have no control over my character.

>simple distances
This is only mildly novel if you've never played anything outside of D&D before - but even there you have 13th Age (which abstracts the battlefield into "zones") and Shadow of the Demon Lord (which has a similar zone-based combat map as an optional rule).

So overall this is really just OD&D with some houserules baked in. Even the previously-mentioned 13th Age was more serious about delivering a more "modern" version of D&D (even if that ultimately boiled down to half-baked narrative rules).
Nothing groundbreaking, but the writer is a woman (and she seems to have plenty of connections), so people keep hyping this up.

Though tbf, the previous hyped darling of the OSR community - Old-School Essentials - is literally just B/X with nicer formatting and the additional classes from AD&D ported back into B/X "race as class" format, so maybe the community is just retarded.

[wulfenlord]

Bitch who published one adventure is being touted as the next Gygax. Guess she fucked the important people, unlike Lindsay



That annoying autism smirk á la Encanto

[Kugelfisch]

>2d6 rolling abilities from a table
I know just about nothing about /tg/ shit outside of 40k and MTG. But I do know Backgammon. That's a retarded idea. It's going to be such an obviously skewed distribution and the only thing more insulting about it is how easy it would be to fix that.
Expand the list to 20 and roll with a D20.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Here's the advancement for the Fighter:

2: Gain Weapon Mastery with one additional weapon
3-6: +1 to melee and ranged attacks
7-9: +2 to Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution stat
10-11: Choose one kind of armor. You get +1 AC from that armor
12: Choose a talent or +2 points to distribute to stats

The 12 result is universal for every class, so you do have a choice. Only a 2.78% chance, but still.
With a 2d6 bell curve distribution, most of the time you'll end up with +1 attack or +2 to a relevant stat (which I guess is one novel idea since old-school D&D doesn't really have stat increases that aren't tied to some magic item). This isn't even a typical progression for the Fighter since Fighters tended to get stuff like multiple attacks at certain milestones (or in some editions really crazy shit like being able to mow down cannon fodder like it's Dynasty Warriors). Now you just have "numbers go up" with a few extra steps.
"Weapon Mastery" is sadly not like in BECMI where you can specialize in certain weapons to kick even more ass. It reminds me more of the license system from FF12 in that you need a Weapon Mastery to not suck (the Fighter's superior attack bonus is gated behind having Weapon Mastery).
You only start out with one Weapon Mastery, so if you're tired of swinging around a longsword all day you better hope to roll a 2 or 12 when you level up. It's a steal at 5.56%!

[Kugelfisch]

There are ranges? Now that's even dumber.
Okay, you clearly want most level ups to result in a +1 to melee or a +2 in relevant stats. You want +AC, weapon talents and talents or +2 to other stats to be rare.

Make 3-6 and 7-9 a coin flip, pepper in the other rewards as mandatory at certain levels. There you go. Immediately, you've normalised character growth in a more plannable and even manner.

Shit, even in Backgammon there is the backgame where making the "wrong" play that increases your chances of getting hit being the right move. This is just leveling up, though. Some unfortunate rolls can easily result in characters that feel like they have no progress in the way the player would wish.
That shit is getting house ruled faster than a crowd of niggers will rob a Footlocker during a riot.

[Le Redditeur]

Expand the list to 20 and roll with a D20.

That's how old Paranoia did character generation, resulting in completely unplayable shmucks that you were encouraged by the rule book itself to get killed as fast as possible to try and generate another one that didn't suck so much. Which of course was completely in the spirit of the game (incompetent retards becoming "elite Troubleshooters" and failing spetacularly at impossible missions they were assigned).

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

It's a sad thing when your fantasy heartbreaker has to be compared to a pure parody game like Paranoia.

There are ranges? Now that's even dumber.

It's one way to reign in the bell curve. Which they didn't because they didn't expand the ranges for the rare 2/12 results.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

WotC to remove half-elves and -orcs from the core book

Apparently Rassenschande is "inherently racist".
What makes this extra funny is that one of the main characters of the new movie is a half-elf.

[wulfenlord]

Another prime example of So far left they quantunnel all the way 'round to the farthest right