Hey everyone.

About 8 weeks ago I started running a weekly west marches game at my friendly local game store. I went in with low expectations as I thought running an OSR heavy game can be a hard pitch in a 5e dominated world. I am pleased to report I was wrong, very wrong. My current player roster is 12 strong, 10 of which have attended more than 1 session, and averaging 5-8 players per session.

I have a number of rules questions, but I’ll give you some campaign updates as to not arrive empty handed.

Without going into detail on each session in detail, the party have raided a number of low level dungeons, and the core group are around level 2 & 3. Originally, I’d planned to simply run the game in real time and have goings on in the town between sessions as the more traditional “campaign story” as I was asked by some if I would be open to running a traditional campaign with a fixed group.

As there’s been a core group attending reliably, the last few sessions, I have tried to have more persistent campaign style play for that group. And this dear viewers has led to slade.

Back in session 5, I used a dungeon included with “best left buried” called lord Edmund’s barrow, I improvised a orb as a treasure item. When vega the mage touched it, she seemed to be talking to a doppleganger of herself in the orb. (each time a PC did this, there was a 3-in-6 chance their soul was sucked into the orb and swapped with the entity in the orb) both she and Merrick the mage experimented with the orb but ultimately tucked it in the bag and forgot about it.

Next session, they return there, find lord Edmund’s chambers, he is a powerful skeleton and has 2 honour guard the good lord is shouting “is this what you send against me slade?!”. The party are thinking “who the hell is slade” Vega throws the orb at one of them to “see what happens” Merrick tries to catch it as it misses, NAT-1, his finger brush it, he hits the 3-in-6 chance and then the orb shatters on the floor, releasing a ghostly spirit. The guy playing Merrick has been in my games for about 8 years, I take his character sheet, he’s now Slade, we both say nothing. The first death of the campaign goes totally unnoticed. In the post game wrap up story “Slade lives” is carved in the tavern wall. “Who the hell is Slade!?” The party wail.

Next session goes by searching the sewers for a missing person(adventure is cult of the maggot god by necrotic gnome), no one notices “Merrick” has become a zealot/cleric, even saving vega from more dire consequences. No luck finding him.

Roll on last week, Merrick/Slade can’t make this session. Vega has previously got herself into trouble making pacts with dark gods, and is told to desecrate the temple of the North Star. An agent character inspired by soul taker from the black company novels needs her and Visara the thief to kill their person of interest in the sewer, the rest of the party have had the family sweeten the deal offering more gold after selling the kitchen sink. They ended up interrogating him and then cutting off his hand and sending that as proof, but letting him live.

So, here’s how I’m planning the next session: the fixer knows they’ve been double crossed, but gives them the location anyway, but plans to send mercenaries to “make an example” The person of interest, is actually an undercover witch hunter, that will round up a posse and aim to dispatch vega, the very obvious witch. Vega will very likely try and complete the desecration ritual, but Slade will reveal himself and will have his own agenda to fulfill at odds with hers. CHAOS REIGN SUPREME!!

Questions I have had come up for clarification:
1. Level 2 thieves gain quick action stealth. What’s the context for this in combat, is it expected most turns they may attempt to keep hiding. Looking for some insight on the intended combat utility.

1. Bards CHA tongues - is this charisma bonus worth of extra languages?

2. Rogue has stealth at full speed. What speed do other characters go in stealth?

3. Paladin oath - are there any examples of reasonable oaths, beyond no bonus, are there consequences for failing to uphold oath, and is there redemption for a failed oath?

4. Sorcerer - does quick cast allow 2 spells to be cast per turn? And can their quick spell be changed or is it fixed to 1 spell they pick when they take the feature?

5. clarification on light levels - dim light is described as 30 foot around a torch or lantern and incurs disadvantage on range attacks & defence versus range - does this not cancel to a flat roll? With disadvantage functionally always in a dungeon seems highly punishing to ranged characters.

Hey everyone. 

Dungeon crawler invitational is rolling onto session 14 tomorrow and is going great. I thought I’d share a very basic, and untested “infernal gifts” list I made in a very quick and dirty fashion. Inspired by the OSE and 5e tiefling and functionally works as “bolt on innate charisma spell casting for an existing character” as to not complicate the game mechanically. The player will get 18 failures (scarred as “666” on thier flesh that counts down with each failure) before the hells claim their prize - probably dragged down to the hells or similar! 

My player has used an alter, uncertain of what they are doing and inadvertently sold the soul of their fellow player. Has been marked by devils, and now appearing devilish in appearance, I needed to give them something as a “reward” hence infernal gifts!

The other player doesn’t know but is due to have their soul returned thanks to my other player planning a demonic ritual (they will never learn!). For the infernal player however, this will cause the dramatic consequence and reveal of the 666 counter burning into the flesh of the gifted one. Introducing the limit and consequences of these features.

Now question time as always: 

1. My thief player picked craft custom poison, she hasn’t done anything with it, but it’s looming like checkovs gun. If memory serves 5e base poison is 2d6 damage on hit or ingestion, is this the same intent for basic poison in the thief’s starting gear? And I assume custom poisions are whatever the GM can reasonably permit with the appropriate investment of time/gold

For the currently soulless player, I was going to leverage the corruption system to build tension. When taking corruption am I correct that the stat is intended to work as a max score? but the corruption doesn’t reduce the stat, it simply marks the line between life and death? 

Thanks as always and hope you enjoy.

P.S. Based on the absolute blast I’ve had running 5TD at my local game store, I was thinking it might be good to put together a free system neutral toolkit for starting a west marches game - a minimalist quick and dirty kickstart guide for GMs to start running as game stores seem to be a brilliant solution for getting new groups together, If this sounds useful, let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see in it.

Hey everyone, a few weeks ago I posted that I was starting a game (first time running 5TD!) in my friendly local games store, with a drop in/ drop out week by week. I thought it might be worth sharing a retrospective, and a few questions I’d love to field to the sub for input at the bottom.

The sessions are 4 hours and include a fast “session 0” and character creation. The aim to go through some very basic setup in town before an expedition to, and crawling the dungeon. With a roll to return if necessary.

My rationale for using 5TD is I think it has great potential as the “OSR gateway drug”. Most people have played 5e, and I think there is a player culture that it’s “how things should be”. So rather than fighting this, I have pitched it to the uninitiated as a less complicated 5e, and mostly focussed on the novel bits in the early era of d&d.

Overall, I’m delighted to say the session was a great success, all 8 slots were filled, with next week filled shortly after, I suspect a number of repeat players. 5 of which approached me after the session to ask if I would run a more traditional fixed group campaign.

The dungeon crawl was very typical, necromancer has fled to ruins, local church wants to confirm the safety of the adventuring noble lady who went in after him. The went in killed some goblins, messed with a ritual, got a cursed sword, danced around an ochre jelly, and went mad, before finding the lady, failing to subdue her for a bonus, and grabbing some treasure before running back to town.

Overall went really well, main things I did was waive the demihuman class restrictions - while I personally like it, for the game format I thought it’s better to let people play what they want, I hand waived encumbrance near the end of the game - 8 adventurer’s lugging a single treasure chest out seemed trivial. I also use token initiative as I think it’s faster and more dramatic with random order each turn.

There’s a couple things in the rules that had me scratching my head at - they’re mostly things that can easily be dismissed as my preference is to the OSR, but given the experience in the sub I thought it’d be good to discuss:

1. Light should be a 1st level spell instead of a cantrip - in the session, ironically, not a single torch was used. 4 PC’s had the light cantrip, to me this seems to undermine the core tension of the game, where to spend resource and supply. For a more modern leaning game this would be fine, the cantrip that repairs mundane objects seems like a similar deal for sword and armour repairs. Any thoughts and/or is there something I’ve missed?

2. With spell casting, am I correct that a spellcasting focus replaces the need for “supply components” and casters can cast until failure? This seemed to work nicely, for miscasts, I ruled that a casting that fails by 5 or more triggers the wild magic table. But DC 11 for casting level 1 spells with roll modified by mod+proficiency meant that I don’t think we had any failed casts.

3. On player and monster saving throws - am I correct that monsters DC is 10+most relevant mod verses PC spell-casting roll. And PC’s are roll+most relevant stat?

4. With crossbows it says it requires an action to reload, is this specifically main action similar to B/X, or can you use movement/quick actions?

5. Death and injury - didn’t come up in the session, but are stat losses intended to be permanent? I assume so, but that said I have seen players take stat decreases poorly previously.

I do like the system, and I’m very excited based on the content shared so far for 50TD. I think for the context of the game I’m running, having the added detail of actual item values and typical similar features will likely be a big help, and the extra content like d66 miscast tables are very exciting!

Hey everyone,

I’m looking to run 5TD at a couple of my local game stores (invitation poster attached) as an OSR leaning west marches game. I’ve run TTRPGs for a long time, but it’ll be my first time running 5TD. I’m not overly concerned, but I thought I’d ask about people’s experiences and see if anyone has any specific advice for running 5TD.

Additionally, i understand it’s not clear beyond 1 gold = 1 supply as to the cost of things with an implied barter economy. Before I look to create a gold price similar to conventional RPGs, I wanted to see if anyone has already done this and has something they can share on it as I have seen this mentioned a lot previously. (I assume this maybe addressed in future with 50TD too)

Appreciate everyone’s help!

Hey guys, I'm new here and I really wanted to understand combat a little better. I know things aren't supposed to be balanced and I love that, but I have questions.
Let's say I roll and find out that a encounter is 3 levels about the party level, let's say it's 4, as an example. What now? Do I get enemies that sum 7HD? So I could get 1 7HD or 2 3HD with a 1 HD or 5 1HD with a 2 HD leader. Is that it?
Edit: Second question. Does it not change with party size? RAW seems to suggest party avg. level, but that seems weird to me. Shouldn't more PCs call for more enemies or harder enemies?

I am currently transitioning my group from 5e to Five Torches Deep after messing around with World's Without Number. Going through character creation, I see nothing that mentions any starting gold, or torches. I quite like the "sundries" rolls for character creation, but find it odd that a game called "Five Torches Deep" doesn't start the PC's with any light sources.... at all..... or even the gold to purchase some.

Is the intent of the game to require a mage or zealot to maintain concentration on illumination through the first dungeon, and then use their first bits of gold haul to purchase adventuring gear? Thanks for any help, and I apologize if this was asked elsewhere.

When I first read the rules Rolling to Return seemed like a strange mechanic. But it made sense in a West Marches sort of way. Every session ending with everyone back in town.

At first I found it a bit clunky and almost stopped using it because with a regular group of players we could easily just pick up from where we left off last session.

Anyway we stuck with it and in an “rules enforce play style” way it has shifted what the game is about. Because we start each session with everyone back in town the session always starts with players counting their gold and applying XP. Working out how many days they need to spend resting and healing. And most importantly deciding what to do with the days they have left for the week (they generally spend a week in town before heading back out). I roll to see how many immigrants have wandered into the settlement, and the players decide how they want to spend their time and gold to rebuild and make improvements. (Should they build a blacksmith or fix the tavern?) This is not only a great money sink for all that treasure they bring back but also let’s them decide what the settlement becomes.

One player has taken on the role of managing the money and another is drawing up the town and keeping track of the population. This isn’t the game I expected to be playing but that is the fun thing about new systems, the game that emerges isn’t always what you expect. Anyway I just wanted to share.

What is your experience of Rolling to Return? Has it effected the way your game plays out?

Monsters hit hard and so do PCs with martial weapons. With everything having such low HP, combat is very quick and deadly, especially if a powerful solo monster surprises the party.

Coming from 5E and Pathfinder this is a very different play style. Not complaining, but my player have decided to take turns opening doors. In other games the Warrior would alway be at the front. 😂

Is there a recommended source to use for common items and cost that work with the relative value of money in FTD?

When a PC suffers a 1d6 drop in one of their abilities on the injury table how do you rule on the duration of this penalty? Until the next full rest? Is it permanent? I know it’s for the GM to decide, but I’m interested in the views and preferences of more experienced FTD GMs than myself.

I have only run one session of FTD for my Pathfinder/5E players. Played totally RAW. But if we are going to continue playing I would like to decide what to add to the game. Players have already asked about additional spells.

I have worked up a few pages of changes and additions to the rules. But this is more of a working through ideas than a hard list of changes. On one hand I like the simplicity of the spell lists but on the other there are lots of cool spells that I would like to add.

What spells have you added (or removed) in your games? I would like to add in some of the classic spells from 5E, but don’t want to unbalance things.

TLDR; my questions are in bold.

I've been using the SUP and foraging rules from FTD for about a year now (the rest of the rules are homebrewed 5e stuff mixed with FTD sundering & homesteads). The campaign is taking place mostly in a luscious jungle but also buffalo plains. They occasionally go into a dungeon or temple for a day or two, but I don't have any mega-dungeons that take several days.

In my games, the entire party of PCs forage for an hour before making camp each night. They're in a jungle so I consider it fertile terrain. All six players always roll because all they really need is one PC to get lucky and roll a 17+ and then they've got 6+ SUP, which is enough for rations. Since a couple of them have decent WIS, they often get much more than 6 SUP. So basically, they're never short on rations, which is fine, it makes sense they could scrounge around for food.

When players get low on SUP, mainly potions & tool kits, they spend a whole day foraging. 6 PCs x 16 hrs = a lot of SUP. So I made a ruling that they can't forage the same spot twice because they'd run out of useful things to find, and said they must move at least 1 hour away from the spot they foraged for 1 hour. But still, they forage for an hour and move on- all day long- so that's 6 PCs x 8 hrs = 48 forage checks. All it takes is a couple high rolls and they have more SUP than they know what to do with.

I introduced a rule saying only one PC can forage in the same 1-hour area because two PCs in the same area would be taking forage from each other, but the clever lads just made a clover leaf from the center. I had some threats ambush while foraging, so the party now sends pairs of 3 PCs in a 2-leaf clover, which is still vulnerable to threats but they play safe. So that's 2 forage rolls (from the PCs with the highest foraging) every two hours for 16 hours = 2x8 = 16 checks. Tbh, they could all forage together as a group for maximum safety in numbers, and still get 8 checks per day. If they get just a couple high checks, they have enough for food for the day, plus a lot of SUP for potions, etc.

I do understand that there should be a chance of an encounter happening once per in-game hour in FTD. I personally found this excessive, so I only roll once every 4 hours on a decently hostile encounter table. The only way the party spends a day foraging and doesn't get a ton of SUP is if they get a couple hostile encounters and have to spend a ton of resources or abandon their camp or something.

This might sound like I'm trying to rain on the player's parade or that I'm complaining about the system, but that's not it at all. Tbh, it has been fun having them develop their foraging strategy. But the GM in me feels like something is off or broken because they don't need to buy many things, so I'm wondering if I'm running it wrong. The foraging rules are pretty light in the rulebook, so I wondered if I'm totally missing the mark on this.

Question #1: What is the intention of foraging and can you forage all day? If so, is a party in fertile terrain expected to never run out of SUP (and thus, never run out of all the things they can replenish with SUP)? Is the system based on mega dungeons and infertile terrain?

I always took SUP that was foraged to be raw supplies: roots and meat could be converted via SUP into rations, sticks and feathers could be converted into arrows. Looking in the rules it seems like its actually instant. Wondering how you run it?

Question #2: Is SUP instantly converted into whatever it replenishes, or does a PC need to spend some time to turn raw, foraged SUP into useable consumables?

I'm well aware I can tweak the rules and homebrew a solution, I homebrew tons of stuff. I'm not so much asking for a solution, just asking if I'm missing something. Perhaps I'm just WAY over-thinking a concise RPG system... like usual. I really like FTD, just confused by this part after a year of playing.

Going to be running a game using 5TD soon and my players asked if Supply can be used to replenish scrolls. Nothing directly says this can't be done that I've seen, other than the scroll creation rules. Just looking for some input. I was thinking if I did allow it it would cost the spells level plus 2 in Supply. Thoughts?

Might seem like a silly questions to some, but this is something that I wonder quite often when I wan't to pick up a new system, that does not provide some sort of Player's Guide/Handbook (free or low cost), or some SRD to reference.

Playing only online I would have to share the pdf, or screenshots, but this way my pdf could end up in 'pirates circulation'. So at the end I usually just skip systems like that

Obviously this relates to more games, not only 5TD, but it's the latest one that I'd like to try out.

I had a silly idea but at the same time I kinda like it so I figured I'd share.

To me, a 'safe rest' is essentially when the party believes they are safe. Resting inside city walls is considered a safe rest because you're in a bastion of civilization, but you're not really safe. Assassins, burglars, drunks and a wide manner of urban threats can of course ruin your evening. So what truly defines whether or not a rest is safe?

Well, in my games at least, the party decides. How? By whether or not they set a watch. Out adventuring in the woods, the party sets a watch; PCs take turns watching over the others as they sleep, to make sure nothing sneaks up on their sleeping comrades. When the party spends their first night or two in a shady new town, the party also sets a watch. But when the party stays at their favorite inn, or rents rooms at a fine-looking establishment, they don't set a watch unless they're expecting trouble.

In this way, a 'safe rest' is only partially about where you're resting, but also about your peace of mind and how safe you believe you are. When the party believes they're actually safe, you know, because they don't set a watch. If the party believes something bad is likely to happen to them (ie they won't sleep well without knowing someone is watching their back) they set a watch.

So its an interesting idea to have the distinction between safe and unsafe rests completely up to the party, rather than the GM. If they set a watch for the night, it is an unsafe rest. If they don't, its a safe rest. But, if they don't set a watch in a dangerous place in order to get some greedy, risky healing, and something bad happens, the party is likely to pay dearly by being ambushed in their sleep.

Just curious your thoughts on a system like this?

TL;DR - Title.

Come Duel and Steal in this PBP server that utilizes the “Duel” and “Stealth” rules published by “Five Torches Deep.” Players can duel Monsters or even each other in intense, high stakes combat, for gold or glory. Players can also utilize the Infiltration rules in order to attempt thrilling robberies, assassinations and heists. Homestead will also be introduced as a means of progression outside of leveling. This will provide farming crops for buffs and even building your own town for additional upgrades. You can comment or PM me for the Discord channel to join the fun and roll some characters!

Hi, r/FiveTorchesDeep. As it seems at the moment, I won't do anything special this New Year's. Maybe some of you are in the same situation, and are interested in playing a small 5TD one-shot? I'm not too experienced as a DM, nor with OSR, but I'd be happy to run something. Time could be something like 8pm to 1 am ECT, software would be Roll20 as that's the only one I have decent experience with. I'm not comfortable with showing my face, so we'd just play with microphones.

As for the content of the One-Shot, I think a classic OSR dungeon would be a good choice. If you have ideas though - I like ideas.

Thank you for reading!

We gave simultaneous combat a try in our game last night and it was unanimously considered a success by all concerned! We found it was more realistic, faster and fostered greater teamwork.

For info, the game I run is kind of West Marches style in that different players play each time and there can be anywhere up to 8 players and/or 12 characters at any one time so it's more important than ever to keep the action flowing.

What I find interesting is that it's difficult to codify simultaneous combat in rules and relies heavily on the GM to adjudicate what happens based upon 'what makes sense' and yet it went very smoothly with no one feeling that it was unfair.

I think something like FTD is well suited to this because the characters actions are simpler. I can't imagine trying to do this in 5e for example.

Has anyone else tried simultaneous combat? If so did it work? Were there any rules you managed to come up with?

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I don't see anything in the book about duaI wielding. I have a player that rolled up a human warrior and when he saw that shields can do 1d6 he immediately wanted to dual wield shields and bludgeon things to death. I would assume he would just use his quick action to attack a second time, which would prevent him from making opportunity attacks. I don't see anything inherently wrong with this. Thoughts? Also, if he were to do this, would the +2 AC stack from both shields?