Update: I’ve finally run Swords and Wizardry for three friends irl. I can’t say it went well, but I can say we all had fun and want to finish the dungeon.
I had wrote up three pregenerated characters- a dwarven fighter, a human cleric, and an elven elfblade (a single-classed fighter/magic-user from Book of Options)- to go through Tomb of the Mummy Priest from Basic Fantasy RPG. My first mistake was only making three characters. My second mistake was leaving the alignments blank and assuming they would lean lawful. Instead we got Tim the Chaotic Dwarf, Clork the Chaotic Cleric of Andrew Tate, and Scrungle the Neutral Elf. While I ruled that the cleric could control undead (I didnt feel like figuring out how he would control undead on the spot), he was stuck with the reversed version of each spell, meaning no healing beyond the potion of healing I had the foresight to give the dwarf (I gave everyone a few magic items, since my pregens were level 3-4).
I also didn’t memorize the rules. This normally wouldn’t be an issue, except I also didn’t write a cheat sheet (I’ve since started working on one for combat). So I was looking rules up on my phone while my players had the physical copy. Speaking of which, I was also looking up rules and reading the dungeon on my phone. That slowed things down a little bit.
So after stammering out the rules, Tim fell into a pit trap, took 2d6 damage (he rolled on the lower end of that), and demolished a zombie that was also stuck with them with the help of Scrungle’s arrows and Clork’s turn undead. Not much else of note happened before the three mummified crocodiles.
Scrungle decided to run away from the fight, assuming the rest of the party would join in. Instead, the cleric stayed and fought his own crocodile while Scrungle’s decided to go after Tim alongside the third one, leading to the two of them dropping Tim down to -2. Being nice, I ruled that death is at -10, and he loses 1 HP per round as he bleeds out unconscious. I also ruled that since only one crocodile had moved in that turn, and since both attacks presumably happen at the same time, the second crocodile would also get a hit. He rolled a hit, followed by an 8. Tim is dead. Long lived Tim.
It had rogues as well, and gun rules, vehicle rules etc.
Pickpockets are lvl 10 thieves, urchins are lvl 1 to 4. Thugs are level 5 monks etc. Also freddie mercury and Doctor who is also made canon by the same adventure.
That sounds awesome. If I was more in tune with pop culture (for my health and sanity, I try not to be), an adventure set in New York or even Tokyo would be fun.
Maybe an odd question: Is there a non-pozzed indie TTRPG scene at all? I've been working on something that is not a TTRPG but is very, very closely related. (I'm being exceptionally vague because it would be very easy to figure out what specifically the project is, and I have business partners that would shit a fucking brick about it being even tangentially associated with the farms in any way). I'm gearing up to release an actual, professional-grade finished product that is substantially higher-quality than the most popular product in this niche sector of the industry, and when I look at anywhere for indie tabletop design to see about networking and promotion, it's literally 100% troons, he/theys, and "anti-fascist game designers."
I'm not even looking for anything even positionally "anti-woke," just some corner of the scene that isn't a perfect overlap with the RPG.net folks.
The OSR scene (as in the part that sticks solely with old D&D editions and their retroclones) is relatively unpozzed, but that comes with its own issues.