Old School 5E Without Changing the Rules

Old School 5E Without Changing the Rules

The way I see it is the OSR pretty much won the battle. 

5E is so very much a rules light, at least 50% inspired by the OSR mixed with a stripped down D20 unified system. 

Now what it lacks, according to old school hacks, old ancient Lords, know as grognards is the easy death rate. 

I hear the complaint that it's too hard to die because by of the healing rules. 

Guess they have not played in any of my games?

Is that so? I say bullshit! I mean it's easy if the DM just gives them everything for free and offers them no challenge. 

In a more brutal styles of an Old School type world, monsters are everywhere, who says you can get a short rest? A bunch of clanking armored bumbling fools making all kinds of noise attract all kinds of Beast. You have to make sure and make the area safe that you are resting in or you don't get to rest. 

You also need to be real strict on encumbrance and on supplies. You can't carry everything. Trying to carry a heavy load will tire you out quickly and sometimes you can navigate small areas unless you take your backpack and sometimes armor off.  

 Did you bring enough water to drink? If you didn't then is there going to even be clean water to drink? The party won't do so well if they all have the shits and vomiting from drinking bad water. You can't heal to well either. 

Now did you bring enough to eat as well? If you didn't then will what you find to eat be enough to sustain you? What if you eat something toxic? 

Make sure and track food and water consumption. It seems boring but it can help bring a new sense of urgency if you realize that you are in danger of starving and dying of thirst. Plus it's a reason to go back to town. 

When the party is in civilization, there are consequences for acting like fools. If a player punches or stabs a town guard, the guards will call their fellow guards and attack the party. 

The next thing is the sandbox approach. Have encounters that are there that are too powerful for the party. They will have to run away or they will die. If they are not clever enough the monster will pursue them when the run away. Give the players nothing. Give the players and their characters a sense of danger. 

What this does is give the players a sense of accomplishment that they had to WORK for their XP and not have it handed to them. 

Hope these few tips help the DM and the players to have a more rewarding experience.

Eldrad

Back to the Dungeon 2nd Edition! Simplified and Stripped!

Plans to simplify Back to the Dungeon RPG are underway!  

The game will still be compatible with the all the modules and such just character creation will be simplified. Many of the long winded modifiers and such will be put either into one word descriptors, or eliminated all together.   

Attribute modifies may be (Have not decided yet) replaced with minimum scores (like an elf needs to have a 16 Dex instead of a +2 to Dex modifier) for certain classes or races. 

The simplicity I was going for was obscured by the "just get it finished" mode I was in. 

After running it for awhile , I noticed that many of the features were not even used so they are going out the door. TOO MUCH CLUNK! This will allow for more customized characters I think.

I also went to make a stack of pregenerated characters for the local CON and said DAMN IT! I did it again! Made it too clunky! It was just too much work!

Here's how it should and is going to be! Roll Attributes, Pick Race, Pick Class, Roll for gold, Buy Stuff, Start playing in less that 10 minutes.   

I am also going to put all the difficulty ratings on the GM. The player will simply roll his D20 plus attribute modifier. On the GM's side will be subtraction of -1 every two levels and if he is skilled then drop the difficulty by 5. The player will not have to deal with any of the math save combat.

A few tweaks on the Armor rules and the price list. 

Monsters are pretty much going to stay the same. 

It will be released as an update on each booklet, so if you already got yours downloaded from DrivThruRPG then you will get this update for free!    

Back to the Dungeon Role Playing Game is for sale! Here is the MASTER BUNDLE! (OR sold separately!)

Back to the Dungeon Role Playing Game is for sale! Here is the MASTER BUNDLE! (OR sold separately!)

Easy to run, Easy to play...

A HUGE BIG OL BUNCH of stuff for one low price.

A printer printing out the PDFs in Zine booklet style and with less than a hundred pages you have complete set of rules!

www.drivethrurpg.com/product/197560/Back-to-the-Dungeon-Master-Bundle-BUNDLE

Easy to run, Easy to play...

Back to the Dungeon Version 1.7

Here is V1.7
Not going to do another revamp for many moons and just concentrate on MODULES!

All Vanican type magic.
Corrected some typos throughout all documents.


STILL finding more DAMN!
Druid Typo
Added 0 level offensive spell for Wizard.
Working on Book 7 AND another Monster book


https://drive.google.com/drive/mobile/folders/0BzYaSvmA-OpUQWM1Q0tpVjVldFk

Back to the Dungeon RPG V1.4

 MAJOR CHANGES to MAGIC!

The spell points were simply too powerful so I decided on just giving them 4 spells plus Attribute bonus plus 2 spells a level. 

A Wizard with a 16(+2) Intelligence would start out with 6 spells a day and get two additional a level. He cast at 1/2 his level so a 1st level charter can cast cast 0 level spells and 1st level spells. 

I had multiple criticisms about the magic system being too powerful and the spells being hard to track. 

This fixes that problem. Thanks for the suggestions Tony and Tom.  

A few minor editing problems are now fixed but there are still more.  

ALSO book 6 Dungeon Arcana has been released as well as an updated Module: The Hills of Death!  


https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BzYaSvmA-OpUflNIa3FvSVg0M0lDNDcwNzdBbWlhM1pQdUFyRFY2R21oNE4yZnBoYl9BRDg&usp=sharing

Back to the Dungeon Role Playing Game

Here is the latest version of the Back to the Dungeon RPG !!!

Hope you enjoy this edited version with a Table of Contents.

Got to go to bed!