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Shadowdark is descended from BX D&D and related games - Your character is defined by their Class and Attributes. Your character is largely randomly generated and broadly competent. The ideal playstyle is classic d&d dungeoneering, with lots of the gameplay handled through GM rulings...

The one thing about old school games that is true of all tables is that everyone's table will be different than everyone else's.

Basically, the 'player skill' focused OSR mentality (as popularized by Matt Finch's Primer written in 2008) is a fairly recent invention. The original 1970s-80s game/adventure designers did not really intend their games to be played in that specific way. So lots of old school adventures have...

Time is a flat circle.

The genre books are genuinely good resources even if you never run a Cypher system game specifically.

While this looks great, I gotta imagine the disappointment a new player would go through going from this to paper sheets. Modular, component-heavy, and intuitive character boards to clunky, boring, and number-dense character sheets. Plus, after level 1 tons of character stuff that won't even...

Basic D&D is more compatible with AD&D than AD&D is with itself.

Yes, broadly competent characters tend to work best when you have a narrow campaign frame, like dungeon delving.

Generally the more you define skills and specific actions in your ruleset, the more 'incompetent' PCs become. If you have no skills or statistics, anyone can try to do anything with reasonably similar success chance.

This rule applies specifically to 'stowed' items, which should only be the <4 bulk of items that you keep in your backpack. Consumables should always be considered 'worn' and can be retrieved with a single action. The only limitation on 'worn' items is that you cannot wear more than 2 Bulk of...

Great question. This has never stopped OSR fans in the past and never will.

Lots of OSR-sphere GMs don't want character statistics to be used to resolve actions at all, ever. I've seen a number of people who prefer any roll to be an x in 6 or a percentile with no influence from a character's ability scores. They will decide solely on whether an action is reasonably...

Absolutely agree with that. But i think a lot of people like that bias and playing to their GMs whims rather than having to engage with rules.

Part of what is implied by "Skilled Play" is that the player choice can, when the player is clever/prepared/creative enough in their choices, they can fully bypass the "relying on the character’s statistics and possibly the roll of a die" entirely. You want to avoid using the rules, because...

If someone doesn't get one-shot in the first session are you really playing dnd? Maybe I've been running too much OSE

My previous campaigns have all started at level 3. I think next time I run one I'll definitely start at 1.

To answer your question for Cypher: A creature succeeds at tasks below its level and fails at tasks above its level. A creature has (level) x3 hit points. A creature deals (level) points of damage on a hit. The base difficulty to interact with the creature in any way (attack, dodge...

Party is entering into an power plant which has gone dark. They know a Necromancer is behind the situation. Gunslinger, Rogue, Gunslinger #2, and Kineticist. Gunslinger opts to Scout Rogue opts to Search Gunslinger #2 opts to avoid notice Kineticist opts to Investigate (Religion), since he...

I use exploration mode in every single game session. It really streamlines the dungeon exploration process and keeps the pace up. I miss it when I'm playing trad RPGs that don't have it.

PF2 is significantly Heavier than most other RPGs. You have to sacrifice a lot of good things about the systems to cram a meaningful session into a short time slot, especially if that time slot includes reading pregens and explaining the rules.