OSRIC - First Edition Fantasy Roleplaying Game

First Edition Fantasy Roleplaying Game

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New rules for clerical strongholds
By: EOTB
It's a game of chicken when the DM is the crazy one

When a cleric reaches 8th level, the place of worship described must be built within the civilized realms of Hanging Coffins of the Vampire Queen

The Vampire Queen has assembled a team of her worst prisoners for a little game! Together you strangers face a simple choice...death or freedom? She has challenged your daring band of adventurers to run the gauntlet of her wicked dungeon lair using all of your original weapons, magic items and possessions! You must survive terrible traps, beastly monsters, even each other as you outwit and fight your way through all the horrific surprises she has arranged. Fortune and glory await those brave souls who can escape from the Hanging Coffins of the Vampire Queen!

The Clerics in Groat's End
By: EOTB
It's a game of chicken when the DM is the crazy one

Comonoc the Spry Cleric of Xan Yae, 11th level S 4, I 15, W 18, D 3, CH 15, AC 10, HP 39, AL N Psionic Ability 150 (75 att/75 def) attack modes: psionic blast, mind thrust defense modes: mind blank, mental barrier Disciplines: (minor) domination, ESP, object reading, precognition; (major) energy control Spells normally memorized: (7/6/5/4/2/1) command, CLWx2, light, remove fear, sanctuary, augury, hold person, messenger, slow poison, withdraw, wyvern watch, cure disease, dispel magic, magical vestment, meld into stone, speak with dead, implore, CSW, divination, PFE 10' rad, commune (if unable to memorize commune then golem or insect plague instead), true seeing. old, sane, precise, violent, diplomatic, cheerful, active intellect, hard-hearted, intellectualist, scrupulously honest, interested in husbandry and athletics Comonoc is an emaciated, legless whisp. He's well-regarded by the poorer masses because of his frequent assistance to sick or injured children and his financial support of the soup kitchen. Although the town isn't particularly fervent, Comonoc is influential while working quietly towards his own ends, which are invested in the status quo. He often changes the course of events small and large without anyone being the wiser...(click above for more!) Secret Machines of the Star Spawn

Locals have been hearing whispers of strange happenings around the Ancient Volcano. Rumors over the last several years of an unspeakable evil that has risen up inside. An evil that "fell from the stars." There is something wicked and devilish going on inside. Highwaymen report of strange creatures, mechanical monsters, horrible beasts and "little green men" that are roaming the land. You and your stalwart adventurers have decided to take on the challenge of plundering the mountain for the treasure within!

Druids and Undead
By: Larry Hamilton

Druids in First Edition AD&D do not have the ability to turn undead. Other than physical combat or druid spells, druids are just like anyone else when it comes to undead. Palace of the Dragon's Princess

Once upon a time, the beautiful lakeside realm of Thorin Vale was suffering from the death of its benevolent King. All hope now lay with his only daughter, Princess Francesca who was set to marry her fathers bravest knight and that union would restore the empire. However, on the wedding day, the evil Dragon Maelfesto attacked the castle by surprise and took control! The serpent drove everyone out and took the woman captive in the caverns below, wickedly enchanting the place and was never seen again. Riches, honor and glory will be gained for those who can save the fair maiden, defeat the beast and return alive from the Palace of the Dragon's Princess!

Free Town of Groat's End - Twisting Stair Dungeon
By: EOTB
It's a game of chicken when the DM is the crazy one

Since the party is going back to town, I needed to put one together. Here's a map for it, and I'll finish detailing out the town over the next few days in blog posts... Villains of the Undercity

Danger lurks in every corner of the small coastal city of Los Farport. The locals insist people are being abducted in the night and taken into the bowels of the rumored "Undercity Dungeon" below. A lone survivor managed to escape and give some information before dying in your arms: "Secret door...Tavern of the Wiley Wench...Ugh!" You and your brave team of adventurers have decided to investigate these rumors, plunder the dungeon and destroy the dreaded "Villains of the Undercity!"...right after you loot his still warm body, of course.

EOTB
It's a game of chicken when the DM is the crazy one

Approach: gamist over simulationist Appeal: player skill over character skill Aesthetic: Heavy Metal: the Movie over fantasy geographic My games and writing center around sandboxing between urban, wilderness and megadungeon play; and also a heavy dose of other-planar. Quirks include an irrational love of treasure maps, and using the DMG unarmed combat tables. Dice openly rolled to the fullest extent possible. Illusions are real to the character if the player responds except to disbelieve. Gandalf was just a 5th level wizard, prove me wrong. My Personal Rules as a Player
By: EOTB
It's a game of chicken when the DM is the crazy one

1) I do not hoard my wow-bangs. If I die with a sheet full of magical items or spells, then I played in vain. I am not here to advance a character, I am here to make fun memories with people I enjoy spending time with...(click above for more!)

The Mystical Trash Heap
By: Trent Foster
A blog about D&D and other 80s-era pop culture

My infrequently-updated blog ostensibly covering the entire gamut of 80s-era pop culture but in practice focused mostly on D&D, specifically Gary Gygax-flavored 1st edition AD&D and the World of Greyhawk. Occasional house-rules and new crunch (spells, monsters, items, etc.) are posted alongside reviews and retrospectives, reminiscences, philosophical musings, polemic rants, and other standard blog fare. Vault of the Dwarven King

The Dwarven King of Brundurum has summoned you to his throne room within the Smokey Mountain. Brave souls are needed for a noble quest into the depths of the earth to retrieve the legendary hammer known as Fireheart. But beware - the Goblin King and his evil hordes believe the hammer woke a Lava Titan and they will seek to possess it at all costs. Who is telling the truth? Who is really kin to this ultimate weapon? What secret powers are at play in this tale of suspicion, intrigue and betrayal? Only your stalwart group of adventurers will find out and walk away with more fortune and glory than ever...if you can escape the Vault of the Dwarven King!

MontiDots Ltd
By: Simon Todd

We are about writing, illustrating and publishing table top role-playing games. MontiDots is a collaborative venture between three friends incorporating passions, skills, ideas, creativity and fun. Through OSRIC we have published a series of adventures for various levels of play from low level exploratory dungeons to grim survival adventures in upper layers of hell. What is Classic Adventure Gaming?
Article By: Administrator

Classic Adventure Gaming is not a Roleplaying Game. It is not "OSR", even if it uses rulebooks the OSR also claims. It is the style of gaming presumed and presented in the 1E PHB and DMG which was common before a playacting style of "roleplaying" grew into a new normal. It rejects the term "roleplaying game" or "RPG" because today those names firmly convey implicit expectations running contrary to practices of successful adventure gaming. We start with what adventure gaming is not to clear the mental decks of unhelpful presuppositions, before explaining what it is. Classic Adventure Gaming prioritizes the following: The players and DM are fundamentally interacting with each other, as people around a table (virtual or otherwise), not as the controllers of PCs and NPCs. No player is ever required or expected to supersede their own personality at the table with a fictional one. Players are expected to get better at the game and demonstrate a growing mastery of its rules in play. If someone is playing their 10th first-level character in a similar fashion to how they played their 1st first-level character then something is amiss. There is no expectation players will act at the table as if a game were not occurring; players are expected - not discouraged - to use what the modern hobby mistakenly disparages as "metagaming". A player who knows that fire prevents trolls from regenerating but declines to use it because "my character doesn't know that" is roleplaying instead of adventure gaming. Conversely, GMs must not metagame - because a GM has perfect knowledge, they must limit themselves within the knowledge, goals, abilities, resources, and quirks of the NPC or monster they are running at the time in order for a functional game to occur. This is almost the exact opposite of how most roleplaying games view the player-GM dynamic, and an example of how character-first roleplaying flipped the playstyle in a 180 away from how early games ran. Adventure gaming is campaign based; the idea of one-shot games is foreign to adventure gaming. A game world exists and persists apart from any group of characters. When combined with the expectation that players grow in mastery of a set of rules, a single set of rules is used for very long periods of time�(if not indefinitely) so that players gain enough time in a single ruleset to understand it thoroughly as opposed to a superficial understanding. Because a GM is comfortable with highly experienced players, rules tinkering for tinkering's sake, or perhaps to artificially reintroduce an atmosphere of player uncertainty due to ignorance, is discouraged. GMs choose rulesets they already agree with the basic principles and presuppositions of the author, so that everyone can get on with the act of playing. High level play is embraced, it is the goal of every campaign. Nobody is trying to tell a story. A GM writes places and situations; if a future is written, it is the future of what will happen in that location or what those NPCs will accomplish if the players choose not to engage with it or them at all. No attempt is made to pre-determine the course of what will happen if the players decide to engage with that content. Because the GM has determined the goals, resources, abilities, local geography, and "personality" of any NPCs at a location, they have all the tools necessary to react believably and distinctly to whatever actions or plans the players may devise at the time of contact. Player agency is paramount. The burden of what course of action is taken is on the players, not the GM. Adventure gaming is not well-paired with a table made up entirely of passive players, regardless of how excited a GM may be to try it. Many tears occur when a GM attempt to run an adventure game with players who really want the GM to tell them what they will be doing tonight, with players making only minor decisions through the course of the evening but otherwise seeing if they can succeed at the goal a GM has set before them. It is tailor made for groups having a minimum of one player who likes to make decisions. Not everyone has to be a decision maker if the rest of the group is comfortable with allowing a minority of however many to perform the role a GM performs in a more normal campaign of deciding what the groups course of action will be for a gaming session. A GM accepts that world building and location/scenario writing is a parallel but separate hobby to the game itself. GMs enjoy worldbuilding for its own sake. There is no feeling that time spent devising locations and NPCs is "wasted" if players do not interact with it. Instead, because the GM has written out the effect of players not engaging with that content at all, the game world changes accordingly and seems to the players to move even where they've not personally intervened. As players develop their mastery of the ruleset, the pace of play becomes much faster than most roleplaying game groups experience at the table. The ideal all participants are aiming for is a tempo approaching a ping-pong game, where the GM is delivering information to the players who act or react to it quickly without negotiations over the information. Unlike in many RPGs, 1st level characters do not have an at-will 9th level time stop spell they can use any time they would prefer more info to make a decision. Everyone accepts that some decisions made will result in less than ideal outcomes because the game continually moves forward without time to reflect if circumstances aren't entirely in the PCs' control. But this results in more exploration, more encounters, and faster advancement in the aggregate. Adventure gaming is not a low-treasure, "magic is rare and wonderous" affair. "Mudcore" gaming as personified by low-resource, "realism" games such as HARN are thematic mismatches. Player agency requires ample player resources, and the GM is not intimidated by players rapidly growing in wealth, power, and independence as the early game is escaped. Early games were light on built-in character class powers because it was expected the PC would have several magical items giving an ever-changing de facto suite of "character powers" that would morph with time as items were used up (or destroyed) and replaced with new and different items. These principles are all found in the 1st edition advanced PHB and DMG (and I strongly recommend advanced forms of the game for use with it), although they fell out of fashion as a greater number of hobbyists more comfortable with playacting than rigorous gaming, joined the hobby. Adventure gaming carves this early style back out of and away from the more common style practiced today, that openly discourages many elements that make it great. It is not for every table or every group, but for those it suites it is irreplaceable. If you and your group see an activity in the pages of the the book that play never seems to quite capture (and you wish it did), try running a campaign based upon these principles and see if the game becomes more enjoyable and engaging.

Free City of Holting
By: Douglas Scot Price

I have some art, work OSRIC is welcome to use as it deems fit. "YAR to "The End of the OSR"
By: EOTB
It's a game of chicken when the DM is the crazy one

Melan's post discussing the end of the OSR, and Anthony Huso's response, offered a chance to have -if for a small moment shared by only a few people - that sort of chained conversation that kicked the whole mess off and running. I say "mess" with mixed feelings ranging from fondness to good riddance...(click above for more!)

Dread Swamp of the Banshee

The beautiful and wealthy noblewoman Astoria Pardition needs your help. Returning home after many years of traveling adventures, she has discovered that her family lands have now become a cursed swamp! Many treasures were lost and now lay buried in the evil and water soaked muck. In addition, a sinister banshee has arisen who lurks in the darkness of the bogs, moaning and howling throughout the night, frightening the locals! Smugglers and criminals have invaded as well to hide their felonious activities here, but there is more to fear in the mist than the designs of wicked and evil men. A brave group of adventurers is needed to set things right again for the hefty reward she is offering! Find your courage, sharpen your blade, trust no one and you may just solve the mystery, get the booty and survive the Dread Swamp of the Banshee! Shadow of the Necromancer

Fear stalks through the darkness of night in the form of the walking dead! They attack innocent travelers and merchant caravans in the moonlight! Animated skeletons have also been seen digging up the recently dead and carrying them into the nearby ruins of an old abandoned keep! Rumor spreads fast from lip to ear amongst the locals, whispering that a sinister hooded figure has been seen directing the undead and is taking up residence in that foul dungeon! Your stalwart group of adventurers has decided to take on this challenge, get the treasure you know is in there and defeat this evil menace known only as the Shadow of the Necromancer!

Undead In AD&D
By: Larry Hamilton

I was reading up on the various undead in the Monster Manual, and noted which ones in their descriptions specifically mentioned throwing holy water on them would hurt them. Lost Temple of the Snake Men
By: Ernie Noa

Strange abductions of villagers and travelers are growing bolder near the port town of Caraal on the edge of the Glimmerhold Jungle. Frightened and half-crazed, a woman has escaped from her captors and returned to civilization. She tells tales of snake men who inhabit the ruins of an ancient temple deep in the jungle. Adventures are called for to put down this threat. The jungle is thick and full of strange creatures. The ancient terrors of the snake men are only rivaled by whispers of the treasures of their lost civilization. This one-shot adventure for OSRIC, AD&D or similar retro-clones is recommended for 7th through 9th level characters.

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