I've been reading a lot of different OSR games recently and noticed that the Crypts & Things Remastered Edition (not yet released) is going to make use of some kind of Luck mechanic in substitution of saving throws (from what I can piece together, I don't have access to the backer's PDF, alas, I didnt know about this product until recently).
As I understand it the Crypts & Things Luck mechanic was inspired by the old Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson Fighting Fantasy books, which used an oscillating Luck score as the adventure book progressed. I think this is a VERY interesting idea that has the potential to add some great twists to traditional DnD and other roleplaying games. Currently I'm working on a Low Fantasy OSR/d20 hybrid game system (working title "Low Fantasy Gaming" or LFG), and the Luck mechanic is a critical enabler for a number of design options. Some ideas that I'm experimenting with are:
The above are just some Luck dependent ideas I'm tinkering with for LFG. I hope they might inspire you to consider using a Luck mechanic of some variation in your own game. If you have any ideas on how we can use Luck in a DnD like game, by all means let me know! Do you like the above ideas? Hate them? I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts.
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So I've been reading a lot of the OSR ("Old School Revival" amongst others) DnD games lately, as well as settings that might be characterised as "Low Fantasy". By low fantasy, I mean settings which tend to have the following features:
In my ideal "low fantasy" DnD ruleset, I would have only a single type of spell caster, most similar to something like a warlock or wizard from 5e (but with healing magic as part of the spell list). Which means no clerics. And if I remove clerics, the wisdom ability score becomes much less important. Which presents an opportunity to revise the classic six attributes. So here are my revised attributes to better suit a "low fantasy" OSR game rule set:
As you can see from the above list, wisdom is no more, narrowed instead to Willpower, critical for any PC that does not want to easily succumb to fear, charm or madness (common threats in many Sword & Sorcery games), not to mention Hold Person and similar OSR spells. Perceptiveness gets wrapped into Intelligence, making it much less of a "dump stat" for any PC. Finally, Charisma is also narrowed somewhat, the sense of self aspect rolled into Willpower, clarifying Charisma as the ability to influence others. Houserule #9: Variant ability scores for OSR Low Fantasy
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