Travelling The Astral Web

Back in the mid-1990’s, I developed a campaign setting for space opera¹ type campaigns. My hope was to attract a community that would be interested in co-developing the setting under an open license. That part never happened.

While the map is long lost, I recently came across a bundle of my old notes for the campaign.

I thought it would be interesting to spend the next few weeks posting the surviving information here.

The setting is (was?) called The Astral Web. The name came from the way that the map works.

The map uses the ubiquitous hex graph, but instead of using the hex-shaped spaces it uses the lines. Where each group of three lines meet, that is a node of space that may (or may not) contain a star system. Ships travel from system to system along the lines. In my mind, this was much like a spider crawling its web.

Let me show you how it works:

Using the diagram above, imagine, if you will, that you're in a starship located in the “B” system. There are three nexus lines that leave that system (and, for that matter, every other system or area of space). If you were to activate your Nexus Drive with no polarity set (i.e. no vertical bias), then you would emerge in the “C” system. If, instead, you had your polarity set to negative (“-”), then you would emerge in the “D” sector. If your polarity had been positive (“+”), then you would have emerged in space at the “A” system.

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1. That’s “space opera” the science fiction sub-genre that Star Trek and Star Wars both belong to, not Space Opera the poorly named RPG.↩

Creation Myth: A Campaign Setting for Unlucky 13

Right now I'm in Alaska on a belated honeymoon, tapping out this blog post on my phone, surrounded by breathtaking views. Let me snap a quick picture as I write:

The unspoiled nature of this place got me thinking of a primitive game setting. I think I posted before about running a stone age setting but what if we go further back. 

How far back?

All the way.

The game would start with the creation of humankind. Each player would be created by a different Olympian type god. The party would be the first humans. 

Each character would be the head of a tiny tribe. Originally I was thinking about using D&D rules, and the tribe size would be based on the character's charisma score. Switching to U13, I'm not sure how I'll handle it.

The player characters will have no technology. No stone tools. No knowledge of farming or ranching. 

It's not fully formed yet. Just an idea.

Knoll of the Dead: The Map

 You may be wondering "Why hasn't there been a post for nearly a month?"

I've been working on one, but it's a long post, and I've been having trouble finishing it.  It dawned on me that I should just break it down into smaller pieces and make it a series.

This series of posts was requested by the players of Teena and Zyier. They wanted to see what they missed, so to speak.

The Map

I normally don't like to share my maps on here, because I like to reuse them and I'm afraid that my players will find the blog. But I specifically made this map as a one-shot disposable tutorial.  It's good for teaching the game, but not one I'm likely to use for any other purpose.

The map is the traditional 1 square = 10 feet. Because it is a thorny hedgerow rather than a building, there are no doors. The corners are probably not as sharp as shown on the map.

The party entered on the passage to the left (west) of the map.  When they reach the four way intersection they turned to their left (north). They followed that passage as it turned again to the east until they hit the four way intersection that leads to room 4.  At that intersection they turned to the north and ended up leaving the hedge.

They traveled outside the knoll going east the south, and re-entered through the eastern passage (on the right hand side of the map).  It was at the first three-way intersection where they lit the fire.

To Be Continued...

That's it for this week. Next week we'll start looking at the details.

Play Report: The Tale of Teena and Zyier

I know a couple that have been interested in playing D&D for a while, but never have. They told me that they didn’t know how to play, so I offered to run a one-shot for them.

The Platform

I live in western New York. They live in Indiana, so I suggested we play via Roll20. They made accounts and joined one of the games I have setup there.

The Rules

Ostensibly, the rules were White Box Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game which a freely available re-presentation of the Swords & Wizardry White Box rules, which (in turn) is a retro-clone of the original 3 books of the 1974 edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

In reality, the only thing the book was opened for was the equipment/price list and spell descriptions. The rest of the game was played off the cuff. That’s the glory of OSR games. “Rulings, not rules.”

House Rules

I did use a few house rules. For magic, I used the Crowfield Magic System; it worked well.

I also used a different character creation system. A player would roll 3d6 and pick the stat to put it in. Once a stat was picked it couldn’t be unpicked, so the second roll only had 5 possible stats. After all 6 stats were rolled, an additional 3d6 was rolled, and the player could replace the lowest roll with the new one. This allows players to wait for a good roll in their class’s important stats yet prevents every character’s highest stat automatically being in the perfect slot. Though, both players did end up with the highest roll in the prime attribute for their class. Still, it was fun and it worked. I worry about how it would have felt if the dice were being more stingy, however.

The last house rule was about hit points. I stole a suggestion from 1989’s D&D module B11: King’s Festival. The players still rolled, but if they got less than a minimum for their class then that minimum was used. Any adjustment for Constitution was added after the minimum roll adjustment.

Class	Minimum HP
Cleric	5
Fighter	6
Magic-User	3
Thief	3

The Setting

After blathering on about it for a year and a half, you’d think I’d set the game in Crowfield, but I didn’t. Because this was a tutorial type game, I wanted the setting to be more “generic D&D” (if that makes any sense), so I used my Bloodport setting.

The Characters

The dice were rolling hot, and both players ended up with high scores:

	Teena	Zyier	Notes
Class	Magic-User	Thief	Thief shouldn’t have been a valid class, but I forgot and we just ran with it.
str	9	15	+1 bonus for Zyier
int	14	10	+1 bonus for Teena
wis	12	12
dex	11	15	+1 bonus for Zyier
con	14	10	+1 bonus for Teena
chr	11	9
hit points	4	4
Armor Class	10	11	Zyier forgot to buy armor.

The Adventure

The adventure started in the city of Bloodport. I told the players that their characters already knew each other and had been friends for years.

Scene 1: The Tavern

The story opened in Argyle’s, a local pub named after its owner. Argyle (the owner) was a pirate until he contracted an illness that he never quite recovered from.

The characters wanted to order food, but Argyle looked sad and said he couldn’t help them. Only he used a lot more words. “No, lass. I can’t help ya today. We be all out of land fish. Haven’t gotten a delivery in o'er a week now. Tell ya what, though. If ya and ya frien' there be doin' me a favor, I’ll feed ye both for a week!”

I even did a “pirate accent.”

In the end, the characters agreed to take Argyle’s mule and cart to Bomo’s ranch outside of the city gates and return with a supply of land fish.

Act 2: The Ranch

The characters left the safety of the city walls and ventured to Bomo’s ranch. Outside of the safety of the city walls, Bloodport Isle is a wild and dangerous place. Still, it wasn’t that far of a journey, as the ranch is only only a couple miles down the road. The characters made it there with no encounters.

Because of the dangerous nature of the island, Bomo’s ranch is surrounded by a 15-foot tall stockade wall. The fence is 220 yards per side, and the only gate is on the road to the city. The characters met Bomo, a halfling land fish rancher, and gave him a note from Argyle that explained the situation.

Bomo explained in a squeaky voice that he couldn’t spare any land fish at the moment. All his stock were being eaten by foxes. Until the fox problem was solved, he couldn’t help the characters.

The characters heroically offered to help. They kept watch overnight, and sure enough they heard the sounds of a fox digging a hole under the stockade fence. When the fox emerged, I describe it to them.

“You know how foxes look like cuter, longer versions of Pomeranians? With shiny red fur with little tufts of white on the tail and ears?”

“Yes,” replied Teena’s player.

“This one doesn’t look like that. It looks like maybe it used to look like that, but it lost a fight to a bear. Its fur is matted and missing in splotches. In fact, its flesh is missing in places, and one eyeball is dangling out of its socket.”

“It’s a zombie fox!” Teena’s player rightly exclaimed!

“Looks like it could be!” I said.

After the sounds of page flipping the player said “Wait! Those aren’t in the book!”

“I know,” said I in my best DM voice.

The players (well, the characters) were infected with “analysis paralysis.” They stood around talking about what they should do, and not reaching any conclusions. The zombie fox, on the other hand, had no such issue. It just headed for the nearest pen of land fish and started trying to get in.

“I think you should kill it,” said Teena to Zyier.

“Me? Why don’t you kill it?” he asked in reply.

“Because I’m trying to find a spell to use.”

Zyier drew his sword and attacked. It took two rounds to dispatch the beast, and never got a hit in on him. The thief scored his first kill.

The players then fell back into their analysis paralysis. They knew that the needed to figure out where the zombie fox came from, but didn’t know how to do it.

I tried to help them out by having another fox tunnel into the ranch, but this one was a skeleton fox. In my mind they could have let the beast take a land fish and follow it to where it took it, but they couldn’t figure out a way to get to the other side of the stockade wall quick enough.

Teena decided she wanted to capture the animated fox skeleton to be a pet, and started reading spells again. Zyier just killed it.

I sensed that they were stuck. In a normal game that was part of an ongoing campaign, I would have let another night go by and see if they had a different plan. But this was a tutorial one-shot game, so I gave them a hint. I fast forwarded to morning and had Bomo suggest that they try to follow the foxes' tracks.

Act 3: The Knoll of the Dead

The tracks led to a huge mass of dead, twisted, thorny vines. The knoll was easily a hundred yards across in a rough circle. It was easily a couple of stories tall.

The characters walked around the vines and discovered that there were four 10-foot opening/tunnels. The openings aligned perfectly with the cardinal compass directions.

The selected the western entrance. They lit their torches and entered. They avoided any of the side passages and came out of the northern entrance, though they thought it was the southern one. They repeatedly asked which entrance they were at and I repeatedly asked them how they were going to figure it out. Finally Teena said she was looking at the position of the sun. Success!

I had been making random encounter rolls the whole time, but it never happened.

Teena (correctly) assumed that they needed to get to the center of the knoll to solve the mystery, and Zyier agreed. The walked around the knoll to the eastern entrance and re-entered. They came to a “T” intersection and rather than turning left or right, Teena decided that the wall ahead was an illusion (it wasn’t) and tried to get through it. The she had an idea.

“Let’s burn it!”

Zyier looked at her in disbelief. “No,” he said. “That’s a bad idea.”

They discussed it awhile and Zyier finally gave in. “I have a bad feeling about this,” he said.

He was right.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m lighting it on fire,” said Zyier’s player.

“Okay,” I replied, “but how?” I was waiting for them to say they were leaving the knoll and lighting it from outside.

Teena dashed my hope. “Put the torch right in that wall we were trying to get through.”

One skill a DM needs is the ability to say “Are you sure?” without using those words. The words I used were something like “So right in the middle of the corridor, inside all the dried vines you’re sticking your torch in the wall right next to you?” You can’t say I didn’t try.

“Yes.”

I had actually predicted that players would use fire. In my notes I wrote “Burning the vine produces toxic smoke. 1 hp/round. CON negates.” In the heat of the moment (pun), I misremembered the note as “1d6 hp damage/turn, CON for half.” This is actually better for the player’s mathematically.

Anyway, the knoll starts to burn. “I told you this was a bad idea,” shouted Zyier as they ran out.

Teena made her saves and made it out alive, but there was no sign of Zyier. She heroically ran back in and dragged him out, making her save time and time again. Eventually i just ruled that she was immune to the fumes.

Once she got Zyier clear, she tried to perform first aid but it was too late. Zyier was dead. There was nothing she could do.

Conclusion

The fire killed everything in the knoll, thereby saving Bomo’s Land Fish Ranch.

Teena survived.

Zyier died.

Remember them the next time you have a platter of Land Fish Fingers.

A Simple Trade System

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I said that I wanted Crowfield to play like Traveller in some ways. One of those ways is that I want the player characters to be able to be merchant traders.

D&D characters are often “murder-hobos”: unemployed wanderers that roam around from town to town looking for victims to kill in order to take the victim’s stuff. For some reason, this is okay if the victim is an orc.

I think the story would be richer if the characters were instead wandering merchants with Crowfield as a home base. While the ultimate goal is to bring in enough grain to keep Crowfield’s population alive, maybe that is accomplished indirectly: the characters bring in gold which is taxed, and Lord Crowfield uses those taxes to buy grain from another oasis. While the characters attempt to build trade routes, adventures will find them. The adventure might be bandits that try to rob the caravan, or a traditional dungeon style adventure where the characters are tempted by rooms of forgotten treasures.

The Traveller System

Traveller’s system was fun, but a little silly at times. It worked something like this (going from memory here, so I might get it wrong):

1. The GM rolls randomly to see what goods are available. Oddly enough, the goods in question might have nothing to do with the world that the player is on. For example, the roll might indicate that the players found someone willing to sell them 10 tons of water on a desert world! (This hypothetical desert world is not called Tatooine.)
2. The cost of the available goods are then determined by random die roll with modifications for character skill and the world’s trade classifications. In Traveller worlds might be classified as rich, poor, industrial, agricultural, desert, etc. So for our desert world above, the price of water would be modified upwards (though if the character had a high Bribery skill that could bring the price down).
3. Assuming that the character buys the goods, he transports them to the next world.
4. The value of those goods on that world is randomly determined following the same procedure as step 2. For example if the player takes the water from the desert world to a water world (which isn’t named Naboo or Kamino), the value of the water will probably decrease.

While the trade given above was bad, the smart player would see a water world near a desert world and instantly smell the potential profit to be made by buying the water cheap at the water world and selling at the desert world.

It’s a fun, simple system, but it requires the GM to go through a lot to determine the planets’ trade classifications.

The GURPS Traveller: Far Trader System

Eventually GURPS got a license for Traveller. In their trade system they pointed out the simple reality of supply and demand: If someone notices that Supmol the Trader is getting rich by bringing in water, they’re eventually going to follow him (or bribe his employees, or something) to figure out where he’s getting it from. Then they will go there and offer a little more for it and then come back and sell it for a little less. That will make Supmol do the same, and eventually the massive profit is wiped away.

This is much more realistic, but a lot less fun.

Fortunately, information doesn't travel as freely in the ancient past as in the far future. This is why the traders of Crowfield go to great lengths to keep their trade routes secret.

The Crowfield System

I like the Traveller system, but to use it you need to determine everything about a planet/oasis first.  That's more work than I want to do. So I’m going to flip it upside-down and make it simpler.

For each oasis, roll on the table below six times:

1. The first roll is an item that the oasis has an abundant oversupply of. The item(s) in this category can generally be purchased for 75% of their typical value.
2. The next roll is an item that is in a state of oversupply. These can typically sell for a 10% discount compared to normal “price list” costs.
3. This is another oversupplied item.
4. Now we roll for an item that’s in demand. Naturally these items will fetch 10% over normal prices.
5. Then we roll for a second undersupplied item.
6. Finally we roll for item that’s in critical demand; these items will sell for 125% of the list price.

If rolls are duplicated, just adjust accordingly. So if Rolls 2 & 3 come up with the same good, treat that good as being in abundant oversupply. Something that’s in oversupply and demand cancel each other out (or you can get interesting: we sell apples cheap, but we pay premium for grapes!).

Knowing what an oasis has and needs tells you a lot about the place.  This can be used to color the town's history and culture.

Players can spend a week observing the local area to make a roll against their merchant talent in order to determine which items are in supply and demand, find a supplier/buyer, etc.

The Crowfield Goods table

1. armor
2. bricks
3. candles
4. coal/charcoal
5. cheese
6. chests/barrels
7. clay
8. cloth (linen)
9. coral
10. dyes (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black)
11. fish
12. flint
13. fowl (chicken, geese, ducks)
14. fruits (olives, grapes, apples, pears, berries)
15. furniture
16. furs (raised)
17. furs (trapped; high quality)
18. gemstones (diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, rubies, etc)
19. glass
20. grains (wheat, rye, rice, oats, barely)
21. herbs/spices
22. honey
23. ivory
24. leather
25. livestock (cattle, goats, sheep)
26. lumber
27. medicines
28. metal ores (lead, tin, copper, iron, silver, gold)
29. metals (lead, tin, copper, iron, silver, gold)
30. oil
31. ores (for dyes)
32. pearls
33. pottery
34. riding stock (camels, horses)
35. rope/twine/string
36. salt
37. sap/tar/pitch
38. shells
39. silk
40. stone (granite, marble, etc)
41. vegetables (um, what are vegetables?)
42. vessels (wagons, river boat, etc)
43. wax
44. weapons
45. wine (ale, beer, liquor, wine)
46. wood (cedar, oak, pine)
47. wool
48. yarn
49. NOTHING
50. ROLL TWICE

That’s it

That’s all there is to it. What do you think?

More importantly, can you think of any other items for me to add to the list?

Unlucky 13 System: Name & Logo

 A year ago I posted about my idea for a talent system. 

For a long time my though of an ideal RPG was one with skills/talents but not attributes.  It occurred to me that the talent system I developed in that post could be stripped out of the D&D/OSR trappings and be used on it's own. Maybe as a replacement for the 1-die mechanic being used in the Clout RPG.

As you might remember, the "Crowfield system" used 2d12.  A roll of 14+ is a success and a roll of 12- is a failure.  A roll of "13" is a special case, called "Unlucky 13" where the player has a choice to make.

The name "Crowfield Talent System," ties it to Crowfield's medieval fantasy setting. I want to free it up to be used in other settings and genres, so I'm renaming it after its defining characteristic; it is now The Unlucky 13 System.

Along with the name, I have a couple of logo ideas:

The second logo is the same as the first, just with the full name as well:

What do you think?  Which one do you like better?  Do you have a better idea?

Armor: Passive Defense vs. Damage Reduction

This week we’re talking about the two most common ways of handling armor in table-top role-playing games and the one I’m going to use in Crowfield.

This post has given me a lot of problems. I know what I want to say, but figuring out how to start it has eluded me. Also, I started out with my preferred position and calculated the numbers to support my case. Looking at those numbers made me realize that I was wrong and that the “inferior” system might actually be superior!

The Terms

I’m stealing two terms from GURPS here:

Passive Defense (or PD) is a way of handling armor that makes the wearer harder to hit. This is the method used in Dungeons & Dragons where wearing armor adjusts your armor class in such a way that your opponent has to roll a higher number in order to score a “hit.”

Example: Swinfar the Barbarian is fighting a goblin. Without armor, Swinfar would have an armor class of 10, meaning the goblin has to roll a 10 or better to hit him. But Swinfar is wearing leather armor, making his armor class 12. The goblin rolls to hit and gets an 11. He misses; he would have hit Swinfar if it wasn’t for that armor!

Damage Reduction (or DR) is a way of handling armor that doesn’t affect the opponent’s chance of scoring a hit, but it reduces (or eliminates!) the damage taken from that hit. This is the method used in Tunnels & Trolls and the fourth edition of GURPS (previous editions used both PD and DR).

Example: Swinfar the Barbarian is fighting a goblin. Swinfar is wearing leather armor, which has a DR of 1. Because armor doesn’t affect the goblin’s chances of hitting, the goblin hits on a 10 or higher. The goblin rolls to hit and gets an 11: a hit! He rolls for damage and gets a 3. Swinfar’s armor soaks up a point of that damage, meaning that Swinfar only takes 2 points.

My Druthers

Does it really make sense that wearing armor makes you harder to hit?

If anything, might it not slow you down just a little bit and make you ever so easier to hit?

Once you’re hit, doesn’t it make sense that the armor would reduce or eliminate the damage you would otherwise take?

These were all my thoughts back in 1985 when Ernie first introduced me to Man to Man, the game that would eventually become GURPS. These were also my thoughts when I sat down to start writing this post.

Thoughts & Numbers

So, if I want to add damage reduction to Crowfield, the rule changes would be pretty simple:

• AC is now equal to 10 + DEX bonus + Shield bonus. Armor doesn’t make you harder to hit. Shields are used to block blows, so I still count them as AC adjustment.
• Armor provides the following DR:
  • Leather: DR1
  • Chain: DR2
  • Plate: DR3
• Magic armor adds the bonus to the DR. Seeing that all weapons do 1d6 damage, a DR of 6 or more would make the character invulnerable in melee except to magic weapons; so DR should never exceed 5

Let’s consider Swinfar and the Goblin again. The goblin does 1d6 of damage, and doesn’t get any bonuses to hit Swinfar.

Case 1, Swinfar is unarmored: The goblin hits 55% of the time. When he hits, he does an average of 3.5 hit points. That means that the goblin inflicts, on average, 1.925 hit points of damage per round.

Case 2, Swinfar is wearing plate (DR3): The goblin still hits 55% of the time. But now when he hits, he does 1d6 - 3 for Swinfar’s armor. Because the roll can’t be negative, the average roll for 1d6 - 3 is 1. In this scenario, the goblin inflicts on average, 0.55 hit points of damage per round.

Excellent! The system is working. By wearing armor, Swinfar is taking significantly less damage from the goblin.

But wait! How does that compare to the original rules? Let’s look:

Case 3, Swinfar is wearing plate (AC16): Because armor makes Swinfar harder to hit, the goblin now hits only 25% of the time. But when he hits, he does the full 1d6 for damage. In this scenario, the goblin inflicts on average, 0.88 hit points of damage per round.

This was my eye opener. Even in the original rules, the armor is effectively soaking damage. And it does it without causing us to have to do subtraction every time the goblin scores a hit.

Conclusion

Back in the 1970’s, when I first started playing D&D, I didn’t fully grok how the combat system was abstracting things. I thought a “to hit” roll was to see if you really hit. I thought hit points measured a character’s health. I covered most of these things in a previous post.

The point is that my dissatisfaction wasn’t caused by the rules themselves, but by my (mis)understanding of them. I won’t take all the blame, because my understanding was based on the way everyone around me understood and played the game as well. I won’t blame them, either, because (as I’ve mentioned before) the original rules are so poorly written the no one can understand them.

Once you get it out of your head that the “to hit” roll is not a single “chop” of the sword against a single opponent the rest of the system starts to make more sense. The abstraction covers the character’s or monster’s performance over the entire round of combat against one or more opponents. The “to hit” roll that indicates a “miss” doesn’t mean that the player didn’t make contact with his weapon, just that any contact he did make was ineffective. Likewise a “hit” that causes “damage” doesn’t even necessarily mean that the opponent was wounded; it just means that the opponent is that much more likely to be defeated.

Additionally, the existing rules are more streamlined.  In the fight above, using the DR system, about half the time the goblin "scores a hit, but it bounces harmlessly off of your armor." So you have to roll to hit, then roll damage only to find out it wasn't good enough to defeat the armor. The single "to hit" roll speeds up play.

I will be leaving the system as is, and not switching to DR.