1 of 1- Chaosmeister
- Warrior
Offline - Registered: 10/14/2014
- Posts: 24
OSR to BoL = Barbarians of the Crawl?
Hi Guys and Gals,
I have been working on an OSR hack for BoL. on the G+ Group. I would love to hear what you think about it.
A topic I have found no good solution for yet is also monster conversion. There where some rough guidelines on Spriggan's Den and I believe they are OK and kind of work. Has anyone ever done a bigger conversion of the Monster Manual Classics to BoL?
As I also wrote on G+ a challenge for me is the reliance on rabble in BoL while this does not really exist in OSR games besides maybe swarms. If I want to really emulate the feeling of DCC or DnD or something in that lineage I would probably use only toughs and rabble only sparingly. It may be a non issue to most of you but I am trying to set up a crawl game on Roll20 with all the bells and whistles when it comes to maps, and the normal rate of 10 Rabble per Character is just not something most classic "dungeons" could actually handle very well. :-)
I know Simon wrote the BoL Hack and that would make my live a tad easier maybe but I really love the basic BoL mechanics.
Teamwork is essential, it gives them someone else to shoot at!
- madprofessor
- Warrior
Offline
- Registered: 12/09/2014
- Posts: 29
Re: OSR to BoL = Barbarians of the Crawl?
I'm not particularly fond of mook rules either, in any system. It just seems weird that PCs should be better, just because they are PCs. For me, it smacks of narrativism and seems artificial. However, I do think it is an integral part of the cinematic swords and sorcery that BoL covers; the image of slicing through hordes of enemies.
In any case, I think mook rules (rabble) are already baked in to classic D&D with levels. "Agents": PCs, Monsters, NPCs whatever are of vastly different power in D&D. You can easily scale your rabble up or down with a few lifeblood or other benefits/deficiencies.
As for monsters. I just think you have to eyeball it. I don't think you'll come up with a satisfactory formula for conversion. I would pay close attention to special attacks and defenses as well as spell like abilities and powers as those are the interesting bits. The rest are just numbers. Heroes of Hellas has some classic mythology monsters that might be useful.
I think the hardest thing to do for a BoL to D&D dungeon crawl hack would be spells. IDK. I just ordered Simons BoL hack from LuLu so we'll see what goes on there.
- Chaosmeister
- Warrior
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- Registered: 10/14/2014
- Posts: 24
Re: OSR to BoL = Barbarians of the Crawl?
I totally had forgotten about the Horde rules, it solved all my problems. I don`t think such a game necessarily need full on Spell lists. I wrote an option into my Hack allowing for players to kind of create their own spell lists. I am thinking along the lines of having pre written spells be cheaper in AP and easier to cast than free form casting. But I am still pondering if what I have is good.
Spell Preparation
Only Wizards can prepare spells in advance and memorize them prior to casting. Memorizing such a spell requires 10 minutes of uninterrupted time per Magnitude of the spell in addition to a good night's sleep. Doing this reduces the difficulty to cast it by 2. Memorizing also counts as one casting requirements for the purpose of AP calculation. Wizards can memorize spells of a total Magnitude equal to their rank in Magician + Mind. A memorized spell is retained in memory after casting it. They are only wiped when the caster is incapacitated for any reason.
Teamwork is essential, it gives them someone else to shoot at!
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