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Credit goes to @clearstream and @nyvinter in this thread.

The distinction I’ve been making lately is between facts and speculation. A fact is something like: the castle has this layout and these rooms (and perhaps these schedules). Functionally in play, it’s primarily useful as a tool for having things to say when the PCs go to that location...

I like Necrotic Gnome’s adventures (and also here). Murder in Baldur’s Gate is my favorite 5e adventure. None of these are very heavy on plot or what the PCs should do. They tend to be open-ended in how PCs can approach and interact with them. I ran some Pathfinder APs. We liked Kingmaker quite...

Oh, I think I found what you mean. Apparently they refer to the SRD as the Online Rules Reference. I had no idea. Thanks! For what it’s worth, and it may not be much if you’re not interested, none of the Advanced stuff is in the SRD. Unlike the Classic Fantasy books, which is mostly available...

These are mine (where “essential” means that I really prefer to have it): A conflict resolution process; Currencies (in the game design sense); Character customization; and Explicit procedures and principles (especially for the GM).

Maybe it’s late here, and I’m tired, so I’m missing something obvious, but what’s the OSE ORR? They don’t in OD&D, and I doubt they do in Holmes Basic either, but that’s not really germane. Anyway, I understood what you meant. Setting aside my personal inclination (as expressed in post #4), I’d...

OSE aspires to be an accurate restatement of B/X. Any issues with incentives it has are shared by the original game. If you’re ignoring those already, so you should be able to continue doing so while using material from OSE. Anyway, OSE Advanced has both bard and druid classes that are inspired...

I’d describe my homebrew system as (at best OSR-adjacent). It started off as a hack of OSE and WWN before going its own way, and one of the goals is to allow B/X adventures to run with some conversion work. It supports all three (retainers, hirelings, and strongholds), and we use them. Tama (the...

There are two ways I can see to handle this situation. The first way follows the advice from the Three Clue Rule to have a failsafe when the PCs miss the clues. A “proactive” clue reaches out to get their attention, which gets them back on the desired path. For example, I assume the PCs are...

raiders no longer a threat

“raiders no longer a threat” We tried a revision to the skill mechanics this session. There were a few major changes: Wisdom is no longer an attribute. Replacing it is Wits, which is your mental agility/quickness. That means stats break down into Physical / Mental groups with rough equivalents...

That’s not exactly true. In the OGL discussions last year, it was pointed out there have been a few cases where courts have found that some game mechanics cross a line to being expressive (and protected). However, where that line is for tabletop RPGs has not been established, and no one seems...

Wow, they get their own cubicles? Friend Computer is so nice to not make everyone work in an open office.

It’s more basic than that. I was just pointing out that WotC did in fact have protection for Magic. I don’t know how aggressively they enforced their rights, but they did sue Cryptozoic over Hex: Shards of Fate.

Right now, it’s difficult for me to speak to what I want the GM part of my homebrew system to look like because actually writing it comes after getting the core and customization right. I do know that I’ll need procedures layered on top of what the core provides. For example, crafting. I have a...

That’s basically what I’m doing. There’s a robust core resolution process (or that’s what I aspire to have), and characters with some amount of customization. While I have classes, they’re very stripped down (less than half a page A5). Most of your customization comes from spending EXP on...

In our case, it was more that they were used to situations the rules covered being foiled by adjudication. When Deirdre used food to lure a bulette away from their settlement, she knew if she got a success that she would do it and not suffer some “well, actually” consequence. When everyone...

I had to convince my players they could use their dead retainer’s corpse as bait. They were so convinced there was no hope, and they had to fight to the death. 😵 Having reliable mechanics they can trust in my homebrew system has effected a big change in their behavior. They’re much more willing...

My system is just a mess of notes right now, so I have no idea what the final page count will be. My goal is to keep the player-facing rules low. That doesn’t include character customization, setting information, GM procedures, or stuff like that. All of that builds on the core though. A chase...

Thanks for the clarification. That you have this covered elsewhere makes sense. However, I’ve played games where that’s not the case, so I didn’t want to make assumptions. B/X and Pathfinder 2e have chase rules, but there’s no trigger. That’s a problem because players will convince themselves...