If tabletop is a toybox then stock it with as many toys as you think will be fun together! Action figures are great with their playset… but about making a maze from the building blocks, playing games of chance with the pullstring animal noise clock, or just taking the whole thing out to the sandbox and build with a infinitely mailable canvas!
Ok, I ran a Traveler campaign and the players were in a mercenary group that used Powered Armor Suites. I used the rules from Traveler, the counters from Avalon Hill's Star-ship Trooper, and the City Terrain Boards from Avalon Hill's Squad Leader. For the several sessions we played, it worked amazingly well for no 3D minis or terrain. I think that is the most diverse play aids I have ever used. (also betrays my Grognard origins)
I personally use Kevin Crawfords Without Numbers for his tags and especially his Stars Without Numbers "Faction" system. Cyberpunks ablation system for ablating armor. I forgot were I got armor (only) rating as damage reduction. I also use Wonder & Wickedness. Mortality wounds from ACKS (Adventure Conquer Kings). This is done in the B/X edition of D&D
I love appropriating content from other RPG systems and even entirely other games and use it all the time! This is one of the things that makes the hobby so much fun and so versatile.
My dnd group was part of a cabbage picking competition, but these were tricky fae cabbage, and hard to spot. For that short moment, we used the game Set, which is a match finding game.
I had one session where my players really wanted to do a pub crawl after finishing up a tough adventure. So I busted out Red Dragon Inn and we played a couple rounds of that to stand in for the pub crawl. They were in character, could roleplay as such, and thanks to some of the cards in that game, led to some funny moments that probably wouldn’t have happened normally. It was a fun time. Before the session I even had them give me suggestions for drunken consequences they would face the next day to fill out a random table they could roll on, they went all out on the suggestions and had a blast when they started to realize which option they rolled for.
I would love it if someone built upon these books, built a long, completely new spell list that fostering more creative play than just plain damage spells, and actually took the time to write stats and balance it for OSR play with interesting and balanced tradeoffs for using the spells. Then you could pick spells from D&D and add them to the new system instead of the other way around. I would pick that up asap.
Not TTRPG specifically, but I like to make a section of the overworld that players will be exploring in-depth like a floor zero of a dungeon-directions to go are limited to paths, roads, and secret tunnels, and dungeon entrances they find each go to different mini dungeons with increasing levels of difficulty. I’ll occasionally gate certain entrances behind puzzles that can be solved by special items or player ingenuity. Instead of hexes, I use a regular square-based grid. Basically, I crib from the overall game design used in Zelda I.
Mini games can be a lot of fun. One way to do this is to have encounters where characters are compelled to gamble. Like Bilbo and Gollum in the riddle game, you can put stakes on the outcome, but enjoy a little puzzle.
for Naval combat Don't Give Up the Ship by Arneson & Gygax might also help. For domain-level interaction, Diplomacy is a good (the best, IMHO) option. Citadels might serve as a replacement for domain building.
There are jousting rules in the original Chain Mail rules, that someone updated for ad&d. I have used these rules for…. 6-8 tournaments for my game and it is at least as interesting for the players as dungeon work. It’s nonlethal and allows you to do quite a bit of story building as you take on rival factions and some political intrigue as your players progress through those tournaments. My guys have won at least half of the tournaments because they are geniuses apparently. You can add advantage attacks and magic items and restrict target zones as you like to make it more challenging. I took the flat bonuses (which are huge) and made them d12s, d8s, just to shake it up. It transformed our game and provides a more Sport mode of playing.
I actually made historically correct firearms for my games for a late Medieval period. The only gun that they can get, other than a French early Fire Pot cannon, is a Handgonne. The Handgonne is just a metal tube on a pole. It has a range of 80 ft, a maximum of 240 ft, does 2d10 damage, can only be fired every other turn, and it requires a turn to reload it. It also requires slow matches and gun powder, and lead, and a powder flask, and a bullet mold, and it cannot shoot in rainy or wet conditions. There's a potential for a lot of damage in one shot but a chance it will all be for nothing and time is involved in reloading it.
Each time I hear about the book of Gob, it sounds better. A nice idea from Mike Shea is to add that kind of spells to magic items, so they don't ruin the "balance" of the spell system, it's just a magic item for one character in one time.
Heya! Late to the game in seeing this video but thanks for the shoutout to Book of Gaub! I'm really excited to see a book I had a hand in being out there and being used!
This is quickly becoming my new favorite TTRPG channel. BTW, a bullet through the heart is no more lethal than a knife in the heart. Guns shouldn't be that much more lethal simply because they are a firearm. IMHO. Good stuff.
Backswords & Bucklers has my favorite OSR combat foundation, whereing your level-based attack bonus also applies to your defense rating, reflecting you ability to dodge, parry, spin, thrust *thdddddd* as part of your defensive capability and armor doing damage reduction.
I always binged the Solo OD&D campaign and at the very early stage of the campaign it was the outdoor survival board game. I remember being hesitant to running hex crawls and i decided the opposite of it was Pocket morph geomorph cards. I used it for wilderness travel, but its not the same as how outdoor survival handles travel. It would be nice to get board game to see if i could make a campaign (solo or group play) out of it and populate the map itself.
Excellent video, thanks, I will check the ressources you talked about. I use Stunts and Deathbringer Dice from Professor DM's game Deathbringer into my AD&D (1E) game
Amazing video as always, and very sound advice. I particularly loved your examples, that book with shadow summons is not only very inspirational but would also be a perfect handout!
My wargames club dabbles with different RPGs.....and usually a campaign ends with us breaking out wargames armies to finish up. Our last Drow campaign ended with the PCs returning home with an army of beastmen and making one of their own the new king, ( after putting their mothers, the matriachy , to the sword. ) We used Kings of War for the battle system. There are pictures on our club website. i am currently working on a greek mythos campaign using ShadowDark. Using Dragon Rampant as the open battle system.
@@BanditsKeep this youtube thumbnail (the cover of the video) is the cover of a an album called "livin' in hysteria" from a band called heavens gate...
Not yet, I have procured a copy of Outdoor Survival though. I played some scenarios with my group. They liked the pursuit scenario the best. Hunting down, and fleeing one another was fun for my group. Outdoor Survival is awesome!
This topic falls firmly in the category of "I hadn't thought this needed explanation"-topics, but I have players who get honestly befuddled when I accidentally say "Ancestry" instead of "Race" or "Will save" instead of "Wisdom save", or people who respond "I don't have one" when I ask them to roll a d3 or d5, so I guess it's good to verbalize things like this.
How adaptable is the Outdoor Survival game to different gameboards? As a player, I would become quickly jaded if, every time I needed to travel long distances overland, the same gameboard came out, whether I was in Greyhawk or Planescape or a homebrew world.
@@BanditsKeep Yes, I use half the 5e level for what die to roll, or what chart for fighters and barbarians. I have a blade warlock who uses table 2 Thief and Elves. My sorcerer and bard use table 1. Lastly the Druid rolls as priest on table 3. My only regret is that I let them use the crit tables for cantrips. I think it is a bit too much. But I wanted them to be excited for the system so that my next game can be DCC.
I plan to mix dnd and wargame in a heavy political campaign but I'm not sure how to implement it ! I would love to hear your take on that since you do it !
"Why don't you try something different"? Because it is radically different that some tables (most tables even) have never done before. I wager 5 out of my 6 players in my game have never heard of Chainmail and it certainly goes without saying that all 7 of us have never run it. So is that one off castle seige really better served by using some obscure ruleset?
@@BanditsKeep Than clearly you haven't met my table, the majority of which voted to remain on d&d 5e during the OGL crisis despite every reason to abandon the system. No, rather your missing the point. The point isn't learning new subsystems or rulesets in general, but rather, the first time you play that new board game where no one knows what their doing is never fun. That experience is a bog of rules explanations, tedium of players attempted to decide what to do (and how to do it optimally), correcting said players when they screw up because you know its going to happen, frustration when the DM messes up the rules that he thought they messed up. SO on and SO FORTH. All on top of trying to simply enjoy the once off battle that should be the highlight of a campaign. If that level of frustration feels good to you, I wager you're a masochist and more than a little sadistic to force that on player, not everyone wants that. Not for a mechanic that you will use once and never again.
@@schemage2210 we play with very different groups it seems. My friends love to try new things and don’t feel it’s hard or terrible to learn various systems of play. Nor do they get upset if things don’t work out perfectly. but if your group is so opposed to such things I guess this is not for you 🤷🏻♂️
Outdoor Survival's Scenario 6 is the gem that most DMs overlook when they pull out the map board.
For sure
Slowly stretching the groups world gives you a chance to gauge their interest or disinterest and you can pivot if needed. Keep up the good work.
For sure
If tabletop is a toybox then stock it with as many toys as you think will be fun together!
Action figures are great with their playset… but about making a maze from the building blocks, playing games of chance with the pullstring animal noise clock, or just taking the whole thing out to the sandbox and build with a infinitely mailable canvas!
Yes!
Ok, I ran a Traveler campaign and the players were in a mercenary group that used Powered Armor Suites. I used the rules from Traveler, the counters from Avalon Hill's Star-ship Trooper, and the City Terrain Boards from Avalon Hill's Squad Leader. For the several sessions we played, it worked amazingly well for no 3D minis or terrain. I think that is the most diverse play aids I have ever used. (also betrays my Grognard origins)
I love this. I bought a bunch of Squad Leader boards with the hope of using them in D&D but I haven't thought of a good use for them yet.
Awesome!
I personally use Kevin Crawfords Without Numbers for his tags and especially his Stars Without Numbers "Faction" system.
Cyberpunks ablation system for ablating armor.
I forgot were I got armor (only) rating as damage reduction.
I also use Wonder & Wickedness.
Mortality wounds from ACKS (Adventure Conquer Kings).
This is done in the B/X edition of D&D
Nice!
I love appropriating content from other RPG systems and even entirely other games and use it all the time! This is one of the things that makes the hobby so much fun and so versatile.
For sure
My dnd group was part of a cabbage picking competition, but these were tricky fae cabbage, and hard to spot. For that short moment, we used the game Set, which is a match finding game.
So fun!
I had one session where my players really wanted to do a pub crawl after finishing up a tough adventure. So I busted out Red Dragon Inn and we played a couple rounds of that to stand in for the pub crawl. They were in character, could roleplay as such, and thanks to some of the cards in that game, led to some funny moments that probably wouldn’t have happened normally. It was a fun time. Before the session I even had them give me suggestions for drunken consequences they would face the next day to fill out a random table they could roll on, they went all out on the suggestions and had a blast when they started to realize which option they rolled for.
Nice!
I second the recommendation for Book of Gaub. The spell descriptions double as adventure hooks, and are wonderfully evocative.
For sure
I would love it if someone built upon these books, built a long, completely new spell list that fostering more creative play than just plain damage spells, and actually took the time to write stats and balance it for OSR play with interesting and balanced tradeoffs for using the spells. Then you could pick spells from D&D and add them to the new system instead of the other way around. I would pick that up asap.
Not TTRPG specifically, but I like to make a section of the overworld that players will be exploring in-depth like a floor zero of a dungeon-directions to go are limited to paths, roads, and secret tunnels, and dungeon entrances they find each go to different mini dungeons with increasing levels of difficulty. I’ll occasionally gate certain entrances behind puzzles that can be solved by special items or player ingenuity. Instead of hexes, I use a regular square-based grid.
Basically, I crib from the overall game design used in Zelda I.
Nice
Mini games can be a lot of fun. One way to do this is to have encounters where characters are compelled to gamble. Like Bilbo and Gollum in the riddle game, you can put stakes on the outcome, but enjoy a little puzzle.
Great idea
for Naval combat Don't Give Up the Ship by Arneson & Gygax might also help. For domain-level interaction, Diplomacy is a good (the best, IMHO) option. Citadels might serve as a replacement for domain building.
Good options!
There are jousting rules in the original Chain Mail rules, that someone updated for ad&d. I have used these rules for…. 6-8 tournaments for my game and it is at least as interesting for the players as dungeon work. It’s nonlethal and allows you to do quite a bit of story building as you take on rival factions and some political intrigue as your players progress through those tournaments. My guys have won at least half of the tournaments because they are geniuses apparently. You can add advantage attacks and magic items and restrict target zones as you like to make it more challenging. I took the flat bonuses (which are huge) and made them d12s, d8s, just to shake it up. It transformed our game and provides a more Sport mode of playing.
I love it!
@@BanditsKeep straight up, I realised that our game has gone from a regular dungeon crawler to a five room dungeon tournament tour.
I actually made historically correct firearms for my games for a late Medieval period. The only gun that they can get, other than a French early Fire Pot cannon, is a Handgonne. The Handgonne is just a metal tube on a pole. It has a range of 80 ft, a maximum of 240 ft, does 2d10 damage, can only be fired every other turn, and it requires a turn to reload it. It also requires slow matches and gun powder, and lead, and a powder flask, and a bullet mold, and it cannot shoot in rainy or wet conditions. There's a potential for a lot of damage in one shot but a chance it will all be for nothing and time is involved in reloading it.
Early guns are a mass weapon through and through
Cool
Each time I hear about the book of Gob, it sounds better. A nice idea from Mike Shea is to add that kind of spells to magic items, so they don't ruin the "balance" of the spell system, it's just a magic item for one character in one time.
That can certainly work!
Heya! Late to the game in seeing this video but thanks for the shoutout to Book of Gaub! I'm really excited to see a book I had a hand in being out there and being used!
It’s a great book!
This is quickly becoming my new favorite TTRPG channel.
BTW, a bullet through the heart is no more lethal than a knife in the heart. Guns shouldn't be that much more lethal simply because they are a firearm. IMHO.
Good stuff.
Thank You! True “dead is dead”
This is the way.
For sure!
Backswords & Bucklers has my favorite OSR combat foundation, whereing your level-based attack bonus also applies to your defense rating, reflecting you ability to dodge, parry, spin, thrust *thdddddd* as part of your defensive capability and armor doing damage reduction.
Sounds cool, I like the level helping defensively
I always binged the Solo OD&D campaign and at the very early stage of the campaign it was the outdoor survival board game. I remember being hesitant to running hex crawls and i decided the opposite of it was Pocket morph geomorph cards. I used it for wilderness travel, but its not the same as how outdoor survival handles travel. It would be nice to get board game to see if i could make a campaign (solo or group play) out of it and populate the map itself.
Cool, I haven’t tried those cards, will have to check them out
This just blew my mind.
🤯 Thank You!
Gunna use this forsure. Especially that Western Percentile system coupled with an advanced weapon.
Excellent video, thanks, I will check the ressources you talked about. I use Stunts and Deathbringer Dice from Professor DM's game Deathbringer into my AD&D (1E) game
Nice!
Amazing video as always, and very sound advice. I particularly loved your examples, that book with shadow summons is not only very inspirational but would also be a perfect handout!
For sure, thanks!
We used some of the rules, spells and magic items from the Arduin Grimoire system in our games.
Nice
My wargames club dabbles with different RPGs.....and usually a campaign ends with us breaking out wargames armies to finish up.
Our last Drow campaign ended with the PCs returning home with an army of beastmen and making one of their own the new king,
( after putting their mothers, the matriachy , to the sword. ) We used Kings of War for the battle system.
There are pictures on our club website.
i am currently working on a greek mythos campaign using ShadowDark.
Using Dragon Rampant as the open battle system.
That sounds awesome
Another fantastic video!! This sounds great for variety and mixing things up :D
Thank You!
Livin' in hysteria 😂...heavens gate!!
Not following you, sorry
@@BanditsKeep this youtube thumbnail (the cover of the video) is the cover of a an album called "livin' in hysteria" from a band called heavens gate...
Great ideas.
Thanks!
Not yet, I have procured a copy of Outdoor Survival though. I played some scenarios with my group. They liked the pursuit scenario the best. Hunting down, and fleeing one another was fun for my group. Outdoor Survival is awesome!
For sure, I really like the game (even without D&D 😊)
I have thought about turning my players in to mice for a short time and having them play alttile mausritter and dcc
That would be super fun!
The 1e DMG has guidelines for using Boot Hill material. (I don't recall how useful they were.)
If I remember, it also discussed Gamma World and Metamorphosis Alpha.
True!
This topic falls firmly in the category of "I hadn't thought this needed explanation"-topics, but I have players who get honestly befuddled when I accidentally say "Ancestry" instead of "Race" or "Will save" instead of "Wisdom save", or people who respond "I don't have one" when I ask them to roll a d3 or d5, so I guess it's good to verbalize things like this.
Indeed
Next time I run a mass combat I'll be grabbing Warmaster, a wargame system that I'm very familiar with
Awesome
Could someone share a link to this illustration of a dragon smoking a pipe? Really, really please...
Here you go - arthive.com/sl/artists/12956~Richard_Corbin/works/320094~Blue_dragon_Smoking_a_pipe
Given you mentioned Wonder & Wickedness and the Book of Gaub I wondered if you had read the spellbook that bridged them, Marvels & Malisons?
I have! I look at that as an expansion of W&W - good stuff.
I really wanted to use Oathmark during a war seccion of my campaign, but I couldn't find the time to fit it in before we had to play.
It can be tricky to add things without taking away from the main game
I usually steal ideas from other systems and as we actually start using them, I adjust them and integrate them until they feel right for our table.
Awesome
How adaptable is the Outdoor Survival game to different gameboards? As a player, I would become quickly jaded if, every time I needed to travel long distances overland, the same gameboard came out, whether I was in Greyhawk or Planescape or a homebrew world.
Easily - you’d just have to adapt the movement (hexes per day) to fit the scale of the map - OS is at 5 miles per hex
We use battle ship for navel battles between ships and monsters
Nice!
Holy crap! You watch Bob Worldbuilder, too?
Heck yeah! Bob is awesome
I use the DCC crit tables for my 5e game
Nice! Do you assign different tables and dice based on class/level?
@@BanditsKeep Yes, I use half the 5e level for what die to roll, or what chart for fighters and barbarians. I have a blade warlock who uses table 2 Thief and Elves. My sorcerer and bard use table 1. Lastly the Druid rolls as priest on table 3. My only regret is that I let them use the crit tables for cantrips. I think it is a bit too much. But I wanted them to be excited for the system so that my next game can be DCC.
I plan to mix dnd and wargame in a heavy political campaign but I'm not sure how to implement it ! I would love to hear your take on that since you do it !
Cool, there are a few ways to do it, I’ll see if I can whip up a video overview
"Why don't you try something different"? Because it is radically different that some tables (most tables even) have never done before. I wager 5 out of my 6 players in my game have never heard of Chainmail and it certainly goes without saying that all 7 of us have never run it. So is that one off castle seige really better served by using some obscure ruleset?
I’d say, yes. “My players won’t like it” I’ve heard that way too many times. I’ve yet to find a group of gamers that were not open to trying new stuff
@@BanditsKeep Than clearly you haven't met my table, the majority of which voted to remain on d&d 5e during the OGL crisis despite every reason to abandon the system. No, rather your missing the point. The point isn't learning new subsystems or rulesets in general, but rather, the first time you play that new board game where no one knows what their doing is never fun. That experience is a bog of rules explanations, tedium of players attempted to decide what to do (and how to do it optimally), correcting said players when they screw up because you know its going to happen, frustration when the DM messes up the rules that he thought they messed up. SO on and SO FORTH. All on top of trying to simply enjoy the once off battle that should be the highlight of a campaign.
If that level of frustration feels good to you, I wager you're a masochist and more than a little sadistic to force that on player, not everyone wants that. Not for a mechanic that you will use once and never again.
@@schemage2210 we play with very different groups it seems. My friends love to try new things and don’t feel it’s hard or terrible to learn various systems of play. Nor do they get upset if things don’t work out perfectly. but if your group is so opposed to such things I guess this is not for you 🤷🏻♂️
Other games have better rules focused on that thing, you want to have battleing air ships? there's rules for that out there.
Indeed!