OSSR Request Thread

Blicero · Post by **Blicero** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 12:25 am

Redshirt wrote:Yeah, after Fectin's list, I'd like to see that too.

I think Frank did a sort of review of it somewhere. Before the formal concept of an OSSR existed.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 5:55 am

If we're really going to kick it old-school, how about a review of, oh, 1E D&D's PHB and DMG? With maybe a little bit of Unearthed Arcana action thrown in?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 7:34 am

OgreBattle wrote:Warhammer Bestiary.
I have no idea if it's mechanically balanced though.

It is not.

Schleiermacher wrote:I'd really like an OSSR of FantasyCraft.

There was indeed a FantasyCraft review. It's not an OSSR, just a regular review.

TL;DR:

"I love this system!"
"So, what works well in it?"
"Well, nothing."
"OK... what works at all in it?"
"Well, nothing."
"And you like it why?"
"..."

-Username17

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 7:45 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:If we're really going to kick it old-school, how about a review of, oh, 1E D&D's PHB and DMG? With maybe a little bit of Unearthed Arcana action thrown in?

Given that PDF's for books from back then are harder to find than living dinosaurs if I can find a reasonable price on ebay I might consider doing one.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Jan 15, 2014 2:07 am

When Kindred of the AgEast arrives (along with a few others), anyone want a review of that? You can argue whether it's a splat book for Vampire or a game in its own right. I had a lot of fun with it and honestly, done right, it is a good game, but it is worthy of a review: art quality that varies a lot, some interesting lore (with at least some casual research into Asian mythology and religion), painful character generation, and wildly unbalanced ClansDharmas.

There are also a few other "Oriental WW" books that will be forthcoming, but I don't actually know how good/bad/ugly they are yet. And SLA Industries, which isn't a splat book, it's a full game, and one that I really like. With all apologies to people who have worked on Shadowrun, SLA is my preference to SR for "semi-mystic action in the future with guns and weird races".

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Wed Jan 15, 2014 6:36 pm

SLA Industries is pretty cool in that edgy 90s drawn by Rob Liefield sort of way, but I'd you think Kindred is more worthy of review, do that first.

Wiseman · Post by **Wiseman** » Wed Jan 15, 2014 6:55 pm

darkmaster wrote:
Lago PARANOIA wrote:If we're really going to kick it old-school, how about a review of, oh, 1E D&D's PHB and DMG? With maybe a little bit of Unearthed Arcana action thrown in?
Given that PDF's for books from back then are harder to find than living dinosaurs if I can find a reasonable price on ebay I might consider doing one.

If you could get your hands on one, I'd help you review it.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Jan 15, 2014 7:12 pm

I do actually have a scan of the 1e PHB and DMG if anyone needs it.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Jan 15, 2014 9:29 pm

I actually have hard copies. Two each of the core 1e books. What would people consider a reasonable price?

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Wed Jan 15, 2014 11:11 pm

I gave goodwill like 16 bucks for a copy of the PHB. For a book I'll never actually use to play the game, that's about my limit.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Thu Jan 16, 2014 5:48 am

I wouldn't mind seeing White Wolf's Risen as an OSSR. White Wolf's attempt to mash The Crow, Wraith, and Vampire together is... well... yeah.

For a while there it was one of the most pricey out of print splat books I've ever seen. My FLGS had a used copy for sale at one point for 70 bucks.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Thu Jan 16, 2014 5:57 am

So, wait, you play as someone who comes back from the dead with freaky powers and, I suppose, seeks revenge on the people who killed him/her?

Hell, if that was in After Sundown, I'd be all over that.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Thu Jan 16, 2014 6:10 am

Yeah. The down side is that it's an express elevator ride to Oblivion.

Basically, once you learn a bunch of wraith powers that are useless in the physical world you re-inhabit your body and your shadow goes into a fetter/object that acts as your conduit to the dead lands. Once among the living again you gain angst twice as fast and your ghost-power-juice twice as fast. You treat all damage as just damage (no lethal, bashing, or agg for Risen) and heal it as fast as you want as long as you have pathos or whatever the wraith power juice is.

You're indistinguishable from vampires except that you bleed glowing green ectoplasm, and even an aura read doesn't help. Then, in a moment of utter WTF-overpowered-squee-ness you can pick up the physical vampire disciplines because fuck you, and use them to really open up cans of whup-ass. Vampire mind-fucks you? No problem, your shadow steps in and goes apeshit because keeping you ambulatory is furthering *its* goals better than it ever could.

So basically as long as you follow your very specific mission of revenge, you're nigh-on-unstoppable. Risen tended to be either massively twinked out if the storyteller didn't keep a tight grip on your character or they'd burn out in a blaze of violence ending in at best oblivion, at worst a shadow rampaging in your body.

Oh and there's some bit about your shadow conduit being mega-super-powerful for necromancy, but never really goes into details.

If a vampire game allowed crossovers we'd always have at least one Risen in the game. You could generally tell the quality of the storyteller by how many dots of Celerity that a Risen had. The more dots, the more BS the storyteller.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Jan 19, 2014 1:29 pm

If we're looking for more 3E D&D material to comb over, why not do Weapons of Legacy?

I never bought Weapons of Legacy -- which should say something about its quality, since I own both Relics and Rituals books and the 2E Kingdoms of Kalamar boxed set -- but I have never seen a more pathetic sourcebook for 3.5E. It's more pathetic than Tome of Magic. It's more pathetic than Complete Champion. It's more pathetic than the MMIV. It's more pathetic than Races of Destiny. It's certainly not the most pitiful let alone worst D&D book; even just in 3rd Edition. I mean, that would have to be the Dragonlance Campaign Setting or Monsters of Faerun. But for 3.5E? I think that it takes the cake.

Then again, the sheer pitiful quality of the book might not make it a very good book to review. But then again, you guys did Monsters of Faerun and made that entertaining, so who knows?

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sun Jan 19, 2014 1:34 pm

Make you a deal: do a full review of Farcast and I'll review Weapons of Legacy.

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Sun Jan 19, 2014 6:12 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:If we're looking for more 3E D&D material to comb over, why not do Weapons of Legacy?

I never bought Weapons of Legacy -- which should say something about its quality, since I own both Relics and Rituals books and the 2E Kingdoms of Kalamar boxed set -- but I have never seen a more pathetic sourcebook for 3.5E. It's more pathetic than Tome of Magic. It's more pathetic than Complete Champion. It's more pathetic than the MMIV. It's more pathetic than Races of Destiny. It's certainly not the most pitiful let alone worst D&D book; even just in 3rd Edition. I mean, that would have to be the Dragonlance Campaign Setting or Monsters of Faerun. But for 3.5E? I think that it takes the cake.

Then again, the sheer pitiful quality of the book might not make it a very good book to review. But then again, you guys did Monsters of Faerun and made that entertaining, so who knows?

I'm curious, what puts Complete Champion so far down on that list? I've never done more with it than dumpster dive for feats/acfs/spells, so I'm curious what made is so bad you'd compare with Tome of Magic, MMIV and Weapons of Legacy.

Edit: Did some searching, apparently you just hate it for being a blatant cleric power up. Nevermind.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Jan 19, 2014 6:44 pm

I meant to type Complete Divine, not Complete Champion. Complete Champion is a pretty feeble book, but it's not as awful as Complete Divine.

EDIT: Did I really say that Complete Champion was the most blatant cleric power-up ever? I must have been drunk. Complete Divine eclipses it by an order of magnitude. Both the Theoretical Optimization and Practical Optimization in that book is insane.

Tumbling Down · Post by **Tumbling Down** » Sun Jan 19, 2014 11:51 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:It's certainly not the most pitiful let alone worst D&D book; even just in 3rd Edition. I mean, that would have to be the Dragonlance Campaign Setting or Monsters of Faerun. But for 3.5E? I think that it takes the cake.

Whoah, whoah, that's not how you spell Dragons of Eberron and the Psionics Handbook.

Speaking of which, does anyone want an OSSR of the Objectively Worst d20 Supplement of All Time (the Psionics Handbook)?

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Jan 20, 2014 12:07 am

I think Ancient History will OSSR anything for anyone who reviews Farcast.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Jan 20, 2014 12:26 am

Tumbling Down wrote:Whoah, whoah, that's not how you spell Dragons of Eberron and the Psionics Handbook.

I haven't read Dragons of Eberron, but Weapons of Legacy is worse than either of the 3.5E psionics books. Seriously, the filler content of this book was fucking intense. I haven't read the book in several years, but if I remember right over the course of 200 pages you got like 50 unique weapons. There's like one prestige class in the book, a handful of spells and feats, and Weapon of Legacy creation charts that are about 20 pages.

That's significantly more feeble than Peter Jackson making an adult parody of the Muppets show.

sake · Post by **sake** » Mon Jan 20, 2014 12:32 am

Koumei wrote:When Kindred of the AgEast arrives (along with a few others), anyone want a review of that? You can argue whether it's a splat book for Vampire or a game in its own right. I had a lot of fun with it and honestly, done right, it is a good game, but it is worthy of a review: art quality that varies a lot, some interesting lore (with at least some casual research into Asian mythology and religion), painful character generation, and wildly unbalanced ClansDharmas.

There are also a few other "Oriental WW" books that will be forthcoming, but I don't actually know how good/bad/ugly they are yet. And SLA Industries, which isn't a splat book, it's a full game, and one that I really like. With all apologies to people who have worked on Shadowrun, SLA is my preference to SR for "semi-mystic action in the future with guns and weird races".

All I can recall of Kindred of the East, aside from people raging that they weren't just actual kindred with anime/hentai themed disciplines, was that it was when WW started making powers be random grab bags of seemingly unrelated abilities, instead of linear progressions of the same basic ability.

Also that I once made an awesome cyborg dude with the Demon Hunter X book and then got booted from the game because I "was missing the point of the world of darkness".

Tumbling Down wrote: Speaking of which, does anyone want an OSSR of the Objectively Worst d20 Supplement of All Time (the Psionics Handbook)?

The 3.0 psionics book, complete with 'psionics are different' by default, MAD psions, caster prc's that didn't actually progress casting, and weird psionic sub systems that actively punished you being a psionic class? The one where the writers felt so bad about it that they put out a little 3rd party splat book filled with fixes for it? Sure.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Jan 20, 2014 2:26 am

Maxus wrote:I think Ancient History will OSSR anything for anyone who reviews Farcast.

This is true. Hell, I'd review World of Darkness: Gypsies if someone reviewed Farcast, and I promised myself I'd never go there again.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Jan 20, 2014 2:35 am

You don't have to do WoD: Gypsies, AH. You did 1E Exalted: Lunars, you don't have anything to prove.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Mon Jan 20, 2014 5:46 am

Yeah, but it'd still be interesting to watch...

silva · Post by **silva** » Mon Jan 20, 2014 5:34 pm

Hey there folks! Its my first post in this thread, and I would like to suggest reviews of some old classics from Runequest and O/AD&D lines, specially ones that are well regarded by the grognards. The rationale behind it is that could be interesting to have another look at them from (supposedly) non-grognards, and also cause Im a big Runequest fan and always being very curious about O/AD&D.

Im talking things like Cults of Prax, Griffin Mountain, Pavis, Borderlands, etc for Runequest, and Temple of Elemental Evil, the original Manual of the Planes, 1st ed Forgotten Realms (the "Gray Box"), etc. for O/AD&D. It would also be interesting to hear some historical analysis and paralells of those, like if Cults of Prax was really the precursor of the "splats" concept popularized later by World of Darkness (I suspect so but aint sure) and how it compared to the D&D religion supplement of the era (Deities & Demigods ?), or a comparison between the original Forgotten Realms box and the subsequent editions (at which point the Mary Sues NPCs appeared ? Was the setting more coherent as a whole by then ? etc).

Cheers,
Silva