Cephalon Dusp's Archives

     One of the defining features of OSR games is how they handle gaining experience (XP) and levelling up. XP, which is the tool used to pace character growth, has a an enormous amount of sway in influencing how people interact with the game. Normally, OSR games make the primary source of XP treasure recovered from monsters or dungeons. Actually killing monsters is considered secondary, if it even gives XP at all.      The method of play that this pushes disincentivizes fighting monsters, since it is horribly dangerous and doesn't give great rewards, but also heavy incentivizes diving into dungeons and other locations that would have them because that is where treasure is found.       Compare that with a modern game like 5E, which either does XP by monster or by milestone. The implications of handing out XP primarily/solely based on defeated monster are pretty obvious in what they would incentivize. Milestone progression, however, entir...

    One system that keeps creeping into roleplaying games is the idea of skills. Effectively, they are tools meant to show that some characters are better at certain things than others. The origin of full skill systems can be fairly easily traced back to the original D&D Thief class.      Before thieves, there were only a few things characters could do (and they weren't officially skills) like listening at doors, being stealthy, and forcing open doors. All of these usually had a 1 or 2 in 6 chance of success. In contrast, thieves were given a list of special skills:  climb walls, find traps, hear noise, hide in shadows, move quietly, open locks, pick pockets, and read languages. These skills got rated with a % chance of success and whenever a thief wanted to use one of their skills, they would roll 1d100. If they rolled at or under their skill rating, they succeeded! Fairly simple.     The problem with Thief characters, and something people ha...

       For those who are unfamiliar with it, GLOG (Goblin Laws of Gaming) is very hacky OSR system that was created over on the  Goblin Punch  blog. It isn't exactly a complete system, but it is functional and easily hacked together to be runnable. The catch, however, is that you sort of need to have a different OSR system to patch in the gaps.      I do like the system, though I haven't run it, and it is very popular in the OSRsphere. Partially, this is because of how the system handles classes and levelling. GLOG takes the view that low-level play is the best play, and basically caps advancement at 4th level. Past 4th level, characters can marginally improve their hit points, attack bonus, and saving throws, but that is it. For their first four levels, in contrast, they gain all of that in addition to "Templates" or abilities. Every class comes with 4 tiers of templates (A, B, C, & D) and you just take the next letter whenever you advan...