Back in July, I talked about the way that spell-casting is going to work in Crowfield. I like the system a lot, but it causes a few problems:
When I was young, members of the extended family would come to our house for a Christmas night snack. The dining room table would be filled with pies, pastries, and those little cookies that people only seem to make this time of year. There were rolls, and lunch meat, and sometimes even some torpedo stuff in the kitchen. One by one, people would filter into the house: my brother, my sisters, my cousins, and numerous aunts and uncles!
It would often be snowing that night, and I was always afraid that someone would get into an accident while driving to the house, and I was always relieved whenever the doorbell rang. It’s been many years since those days have gone by, but whenever I think of Christmas, these are the days I think of. In memory of those days I wrote this…
James and I look at gaming differently. This is one reason why I value his opinion.
One of the reasons for these differing viewpoints is that James is primarily a player, and I’m primarily a referee. Related to that reason is the fact that James has played under a lot more referees (good and bad) than I have.
James and I were “talking”1 the other day. There was a lull in the conversation and I filled it with “What should I write about in the next blog post?”
This was his reply:
Write about a high person in the town. Write about the little things that made him the man he is: a sister, a brother, the time he broke a leg, or when his sister fall into a well, or that time that he killed someone but no one knows.
That last phrase caught my attention. If no one knows, why would I write it? No one is supposed to know.
That sparkled a conversation between us. In short, James felt that letting the players in on secrets that their characters wouldn’t know makes the players more immersed in the game. My opinion was that it would make the player fell less immersed; instead of seeing the world through their characters’ eyes, it would feel like they were reading a story.
That was the heart of the difference. James’s experience has taught him that most GM’s are trying to tell a story to the players. My opinion is that the players are supposed to be in a story about them. Not on the outside, listening to a story about someone else. The GM shouldn’t make a story. That’s the player’s job. The GM sets the stage and gives the players the props. Then the players make the story, and the dice get the final edit.
James ended the conversation with these words:
I did feel that with your games. Not many DMs do that. They’re just running a train on the rails. You can’t even look to the left or right, just straight ahead.
Thank you, James. Those words mean the world to me.
We live over 300 miles apart, as the crow flies. When I say “talking,” I really mean that we were “typing” to each other.↩
Let’s talk about the humble gold piece. And the silver piece.
Before I sat down to write this I thought “Didn’t I already write about it?” I scanned the archives and found that I didn’t, but there was an unpublished draft post called “One is Silver and the Other Gold,” from February, 2015. Other than the title, and some notes, there wasn’t much in that draft. So let me steal the title and finish it, almost 6 years later.
I’ve been thinking about ability scores.
The ability scores are used to determine the modifiers used for combat bonuses, saving throws, and other checks. Beyond that, though, the scores themselves seem pointless. No one cares that your character’s strength is 14; we just want to know that you get a +1 to hit. If that’s the case, why bother with the score? Why not just roll up the modifier and use that as your score?
In a post from August, I said:
I walk at just about three miles an hour. A little faster unencumbered over short distances, and a little slower carrying a pack over a 500-mile trek. If a square counts as 6 miles, simple math tells me that it takes 2 hours.
What I neglected to take into account was that all my walking and hiking has been on well marked trails and roads. How different is it when someone is traveling across unknown and unmarked wilderness?
A second post this week! This one is really just a request for your opinion, so I don’t count it as “content.”
I’m have mixed feeling about secret doors. On the one hand, they’re very much “realistic”, in-genre, and add to the feel of the game. On the other hand, it seems that in a lot of early modules and adventures, a good 50-75% of a dungeon would be hidden behind a secret door and there would be no clue or hint that such a door even existed, never mind where it was. This would lead to players either:
“This class of character bears a certain resemblance to religious orders of knighthood of medieval times.”
Quick! What AD&D character class is that about?
Did you say “paladin?” If you did, you’re wrong. That quote is from the AD&D Player’s Handbook section about clerics.
So if the cleric is supposed to be the holy knight, imbued with miraculous powers by his faith in the god(s), then what’s the point of the paladin? The only answer I can come up with is “to let the paladin’s player annoy everyone else around the table by saying ‘I’m just playing my character.’”
As you can tell, I’m not a fan of paladins. That’s okay though, because it’s really impossible to roll one up.
How impossible? Let’s look!
I’m always leery about how much information I should post about an upcoming dungeon. Will a player read this post?
Let’s risk it.
This post is about a trick.
You know, it's been 8 months since I started this series of posts. Maybe it's time to stop yapping and actually start playing.
Crowfield needs a good old fashioned dungeon crawl.
Maybe near the town itself. As a prequel to the "starfall" event. This way the players can adventure in the dungeon while I plan the rest of the world.
I guess that means I need to make a dungeon...
This week I sat down to design a couple ships using the last week’s design process. As I did, a few omissions and needed changes made themselves apparent, so I’m going to need to rework some things.
This series of posts began in August with a post entitled “Starships in Crowfield.” Despite the title, that post was really about beasts of burden.
With your feedback the idea grew and mutated until it became ships floating on a lava sea. This post is about some rules to create such ships, and to conduct ship-to-ship combat. The rules here are modified from rules I wrote a few years ago to develop starships.
We’ve come full circle. We now have “starships” in Crowfield.
So I’m still thinking about the Lava Sea and Teesha wood. I have not fallen out of love with the idea. If anything, I’m getting more excited. Here are my thoughts this week.
There are two changes from last week’s thoughts.
James read last week’s post and offered a thought:
What about magic carpets for high [social] class, and wooden barges for low class/poor people? The barges are always falling apart.
I replied with some comment that I’d never heard of flying wood before, but as soon as I said it I realized that it wasn’t true. In 1988, Frank Chadwick wrote Space: 1889. That game features “liftwood.” Liftwood is an anti-gravity wood used to make steampunk spaceships in the year 1889.
This got me thinking…
A few weeks ago I posted some ideas about beasts of burden in the Firelands. I received some feedback, and I thought I would address it.
In my vagabond way I happened to stumble across BareBones Fantasy (BBF for short). Whereas Crowfield started an attempt of a fantasy campaign that mirrored the play experience of Traveller, BBF is attempt to convert the old Star Frontiers rules to fantasy. I should probably do a review of it at some point.
Like Star Frontiers, BBF’s core mechanic is the percentile roll. As I said before, I hate percentile rolls. Hate them. I feel that most percentile rolls can be converted to d20 rolls, making everything simpler and faster. Because BBF has a semi-permissive license, I decided to spend some time to convert the game to use the d20 instead.
One neat thing that BBF does is say that any roll of doubles is a crit. If the roll would have been a success, then it’s a critical success; a failed roll would be a critical failure. For example, if Jalice’s lock-picking chance is 68% then a roll of 66 (or 55, 44, 33, etc.) would be a critical success while a roll of 77, 88, or 99 would be a critical failure. While this makes crits a little too frequent for my liking, I like how the scale slides based on the character’s skill as well as the intuitive “doubles = crit.”
It’s impossible to translate that to a d20. Rolling a single die rules out doubles. Ways of adjusting what numbers are crits based on skill level while keeping the crits to 10% (or less) of the rolls also proved impossible.
That led me to think about other ways to do it. The idea I finally came up with was a paradigm shift: Why do crits have to be random? Let the player decided when they’d want a crit!
The system would work like this. Whenever the player wants/needs a crit they simply declare “I’m taking a crit.” He has to declare this before the dice are rolled.
If the roll is a success, then it becomes a critical success and the player has to forfeit one experience point.
If the roll is a failure, it becomes a critical failure (i.e. a fumble), but the player gets an experience point as a consolation prize.
I toyed around with that idea for a few days, but I think I decided that I don’t like it. From a gamist perspective it sounds ok, but I think the joy of a crit is the way they pop up unexpectedly. When you invoke one yourself, I think that the thrill of the spontaneity will be lost.
Am I right?
Remember that hex in the Dreadwood where the party shrinks down to a fraction of their size? This is like that, but with two differences:
It’s in the Firelands.
It messes with time instead of space.
 |
| Sundial photo by liz west / CC BY |
I'm torn on whether or not to include non-human races in Crowfield in general. I'm doubly torn on orcs.
After last week's post, James contacted me and said “I am open to the real world. It’s just that sometimes it’s a lot of work for very little return.”
Well, said, James. I couldn’t agree more!
This week I’m throwing reality completely out the window in the name of fun. Hopefully James will approve!
The Firelands is a desert. An oppressively hot, mostly lifeless sea of sand and dust. Nothing grows outside the life-giving oases. Without water, a man will perish1 in the unbearable heat.
It’s not a realistic, earthly desert. It’s a pulpy, exaggerated, swords & sorcery desert.
You know how I make a desert even more pulpy, exaggerated, and swords & sorcery-esque?
I add lava lakes. And volcanoes. But mostly lava lakes.
As we established in previous posts, Crowfield is a large town that doesn’t grow its own food. It used to rely on the surrounding villages (the Baron’s fiefs) to supply the town with what it needed. But those villages are gone now, so Baron Crowfield needs to secure new sources of food for his people.
The question is: How much food do they need?
 |
| And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying: “Come, and see.” And behold a black horse, and he that sat on him had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard as it were a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying: “Two pounds of wheat for a penny, and thrice two pounds of barley for a penny...” [Apocalypse 6:5-6] |
I try not to be a slave to realism, but I do let it influence my game world. James probably has a point. I should ignore a lot of the realism stuff and concentrate on the fun stuff, but that’s not who I am. I think having these little facts in the background, out of the players' view, makes the world feel more realistic.
This week’s post was supposed to be about a trade system. It’s not. I had the basics worked out, but once I started to apply the details I could see the problems in my design. I need to work on it more. So this week’s post is going to be about starships…
…Kinda.
As I’ve said before, I want Crowfield to feel like a fantasy version of a Traveller merchant campaign. In that kind of campaign the players1 travel from star system to star system across the inhospitable, barren reaches of space. At each system they try to buy cheap cargo that they can sell for a profit at the next port.2
In the Crowfield campaign, the “star systems” are “oases” and the “inhospitable, barren reaches of space” is instead the “inhospitable, barren desert of the firelands.” And the starships? Those are beasts of burden.
Short post this week. I'm actually out of town getting married!
Last week we talked about the map around Crowfield. I drew up a quick sketch in Gimp. It still needs rivers and roads and such. And mountains. Mountains surround the Firelands.
The Frostlands are actually on a very tall plateau (thus the snow may have more to do with altitude than latitude). They are surrounded by maddeningly tall, sheer cliffs.
And there are non-settlement things (like ruins and lairs) to place on the map.
Anyway, the tan color represents the Firelands, white for the Frostlands, and the green is the Dreadwood. The stars mark settlements, and the one in the center is Crowfield.
The two maps are identical other than the grid (or lack thereof).
I’ve been thinking about how to handle overland travel in and around Crowfield. By narrowing down the basic assumptions, it saves time worrying about things that won’t matter.
Here’s what I’ve decided so far.
A reader sent me a message that he didn’t understand the Monsters Never Miss post. He said that he didn’t want his character to get hit every turn.
Clearly I didn’t explain myself well enough. So I thought I would provide an example combat.
When I think of the ideal D&D combat, I think of the iconic sword fight between Inigo Montoya and the Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride. (In a close second place is the street brawl between Nada and Frank in John Carpenter’s They Live, but that’s another story for another day.)
Just in case you want a refresher:
This is what I think we should be trying to emulate.
Remember that time that Paul Revere rode through the village, shouting “The spammers are coming! The spammers are coming!”?
They’re here.
Twice in the last 3 days a bot has posted spam comments on posts that were a couple weeks old. The posts were for a soccer betting site. Oddly enough, they were written in Thai (thank you Google translate!). Who knew that the Vagabond GM was so popular there?
I’ve deleted the posts, so you won’t see them. But if you were subscribed by email, they may have gotten through.
Because Vancian Magic sucks.
Clearly that’s just my opinion, but I know it’s shared by more than a few. Ever since the beginning of the hobby, players have been replacing the “memorize, fire, forget” system with different systems, most involving spell points of some sort.
This is not a spell point system. I think those add another level of book-keeping that I’d rather avoid.
I guess I should say why I don’t like Vancian magic. I’ve never read Jack Vance’s work, so his magic system doesn’t match my (pre-D&D) mental image of a magic user. If you were to ask young me to think of a magic user, there are four names that would have sprang to mind:
I can’t think of a single scene with any of these “classic” magicians that fits the “memorize, fire, forget” paradigm. Instead they have powers that they can do, and when they need to do them, they do them…
…And sometimes it doesn’t work.
…And sometimes it goes horribly wrong.
…And sometimes they temporarily lose their powers.
That’s what I want to recreate.
While I’m at it, I want to align spell levels with character levels.
I had this idea a few years ago. I told it to James, and he didn’t like it. Maybe I didn’t explain it well, or maybe he just doesn’t like it. Maybe it’s a bad idea.
Let me know what you think! About the idea in general and about options I put forth in the “What I need to roll …?” question.
Last week, I mentioned my old setting of Bloodport. I thought I’d take a little break from Crowfield, and discuss it instead.
I wanted to take a break from rules stuff this weekend and look some more at the setting.
Nine years ago, Jeff Reints write a blog post called “twenty quick questions for your campaign setting.”1 I thought it would be good to answer those questions about Crowfield.
As always, I very much welcome your feedback!
D&D and most of its retroclones have overly complicated methods of rewarding players with experience points (commonly called "XP"). As you can probably tell, I am not a fan of complicated systems.
I liked the FAQ method. Let's do it again.
I was actually writing this for last week's post, but it was giving me issues. I ended up pushing it off a week and quickly wrote the Experience Bonus post instead.
It turns out that this is still giving me issues, so I'm going to change the format of it. Instead of my usual "article" format, I'm going to use a "FAQ" format. Seeing that this is the first time I'm presenting this information, this really can't be a list of frequently asked questions; maybe "FAQ" could mean "Fictionally Asked Questions?" Wikipedia says "...the [FAQ] format is a useful means of organizing information, and text consisting of questions and their answers may thus be called an FAQ regardless of whether the questions are actually frequently asked." I guess I'm in the clear!
Anyway, this is my talent system that I developed for my Crowfield campaign.
Talents are something like a cross between skills and feats (in 3E terms) or skills and advantages (in GURPS terms).
They allow characters to do something better than they could if they didn't have the talent. An example might be walking across a narrow ledge. Anyone can try it, but a person with the Balance talent has a better chance to succeed.
This is my terminology, so don't try to apply it to all games.
In most games, skills are "analog." You can have skills at a low level, a high level, or somewhere in between.
A talent is "binary." You either have it or you don't; there's no in-between. In this way, they're like feats and advantages.
Talents (especially combined with multi-classing) help individualize your character without the need for a bunch of different classes.
Want to play a ranger? Play a fighter with the Animal Handling and Wilderness Survival talents.
Want to play a barbarian? That's pretty much the same as a ranger, except add carousing.
Want to play a druid? Play a cleric with the same talents as the "ranger."
Want to play a thief? Play a fighter with the Burglary, Slight-of-Hand, and Sneak talents.
Want to play a paladin? Start as a fighter or a cleric and flip between the two classes as you level up. Add the Diplomacy talent.
Want to play a bard? Start as a fighter or a magic user and take the Entertain, Carousing, and Diplomacy talents.
I feel that talents "feel" closer to the older editions. When the Dungeons & Dragons family of games finally added such a system (in 1985's Oriental Adventures) it was binary system called "non-weapon proficiencies."
Gygax himself is said to be a fan of skill systems, but felt they didn't mesh well with class based systems. This is kind of a middle ground.
Finally, D&D is largely an ability score-based game. I don't think ability scores should be overshadowed by the skills. (Mind you, I feel quite the opposite about this in games that aren't trying to feel like D&D).
It's easy! Just roll 2d12 + Ability Score Modifier.
If the result is 14 or better, you succeed.
If it's 12 or less you fail.
The regular dodecahedron is my favorite platonic solid.
Yes, I'm serious.
Ability score modifiers are based on the ability's score:
| Score | Modifier |
|---|---|
| 3 | -3 |
| 4 - 5 | -2 |
| 6 - 8 | -1 |
| 9 - 12 | ±0 |
| 13 - 15 | +1 |
| 16 - 17 | +2 |
| 18 | +3 |
Your GM will tell you.
Any Talent can be used with any ability score. The best one to use should be pretty obvious based on the situation. Examples:
Swinfar the Barbarian has a the following ability scores:
STR: 16 INT: 7 WIS: 9 CON: 11 DEX: 10 CHR: 8
Swinfar is trying to drink Modock Haforc under the table. This is a use of the Carousing talent, and the stat would be Swinfar's Constitution. His Constitution is an 11, so the modifier is ±0. He rolls 2d12 and gets a 7 and a 3 for a total of 10. He wakes up the next day with a nasty hangover and an empty coin pouch.
Several days later, Swinfar attempts to seduce the baroness's chamber maiden in hopes of discovering secrets. This is still the Carousing talent, but this time the ability would be Swinfar's Charisma. He rolls 2d12 and gets a 8 and a 6 for a total of 14. That would be a success, but the smelly barbarian has a Charisma of 8, so the modifier is -1, making the total an "Unlucky 13." The chamber maiden giggles at the attention, but rejects our odoriferous hero (but keep reading!).
We call that "Unlucky 13."
If the player's modified roll is exactly 13, the GM will offer them a choice:
Continuing the last example, the GM tells Swinfor's player that while he failed, he has the option of accepting a Bad Thing if he really wants to succeed. The player accepts, and the GM rules that the chamber maiden not only reveals the baroness's secrets to him, but in the process he's also revealed some of his secrets to the chamber maiden. And clearly, she has a problem keeping secrets, right?
If the GM determines that the task is particularly difficult then instead of rolling 2d12, you'll roll 3d12 and sum the lowest two dice.
If the task is very difficult, he'll ask you to roll 4 dice and sum the lowest two.
Likewise if the task is easy or very easy, you'll roll 3 or 4 d12 and sum the highest two.
Of course, things balance out. If you have a few factors that would make it easier, and a few that would make it more difficult, they just cancel each other out and you'd make a normal 2d12 roll.
It's important to note that this is about the overall feel of the situation, and not an exercise in bookkeeping.
If you ever get to rolling 5 dice, you probably shouldn't. At that point the GM should just rule that the task succeeded or failed without requiring a die roll.
We can sum all that up in a nice table:
| Difficulty | Roll | Sum |
|---|---|---|
| Very Easy | 4d12 | highest two |
| Easy | 3d12 | highest two |
| Normal | 2d12 | the two |
| Hard | 3d12 | lowest two |
| Very Hard | 4d12 | lowest two |
Yes! Just increase the difficulty by one level (see the previous question). Thus, if a person with the talent is rolling two dice, you'll have to roll three and discard the highest.
You start with three talents. You don't even have to pick them before you start to play!
I was originally going to base the number of talents on the character's Wisdom score, but that seemed too complicated.
Fighters, clerics, and magic users do not gain any more talents as they gain levels.
A jack-of-all-trades gains one talent for each level.
Of course! These might change, though:
This is something I'm adding to simplify the game. I'm divided between calling it an "experience bonus" or calling it a "level bonus." note 1 In 3E terms, it is a single bonus that combines the Base Attack Bonus and the Saving Throw bonuses. In older D&D terms, it's a bonus on your "to-hit" roll and your saving throws.
Here's the values I'm going with:
| Class Level | Fighter | Cleric | Magic User | JOAT note 2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | +1 | - | - | - |
| 2 | +2 | - | - | - |
| 3 | +3 | - | - | - |
| 4 | +4 | +1 | - | - |
| 5 | +5 | +2 | - | - |
| 6 | +6 | +3 | +1 | - |
| 7 | +7 | +4 | +2 | - |
| 8 | +8 | +5 | +3 | - |
| 9 | +9 | +6 | +4 | - |
| 10 | +10 | +7 | +5 | - |
| 11 | +11 | +8 | +6 | - |
| 12 | +12 | +9 | +7 | - |
Multi-class characters get the sum of their bonuses. For example, a character that is a 4th level cleric/2nd level fighter gets a total bonus of +3.
Let's look at these two excerpts from Ready Ref Sheets published by Judges Guild in 1978:
If you can't see that, let me highlight the relevant bits:
| Fighter level | Hit Armor Class 5 | Save vs Stone | Change from Previous |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 - 3 | 14 | 14 | N/A |
| 4 - 6 | 12 | 12 | 2 |
| 7 - 9 | 9 | 10 | 3 (to-hit) / 2 (save) |
| 10 - 12 | 7 | 8 | 2 |
| 13 - 15 | 5 | 5 | 2 (to-hit) / 3 (save) |
| 16+ | 2 | 5 | 3 (to-hit only) |
As you can see, between level 1 and level 15 both the "to-hit" and the "save" start at 14 and end at 5. They diverge a bit between levels 7 and 12, but the maximum divergence never exceeds 1. When you roll a d20 a difference of 1 only matters 5% of the time, so 95% of the time it doesn't matter. In my mind, that's not worth worrying about if ignoring it will simplify game play.
The level 16+ stuff is a bit further apart. That's because saves only have 5 "level groups" while attack rolls have 6. I'm not worried about that for two reasons:
With all that said, I figured what's the point in having separated modifiers for saves and attack rolls? Why not simplify things and go with a single number?
So that's what I'm doing.
That's why I'm making the rolls the same, but how did I arrive at the maximum of +12?
As you can see from the images/table above, the total "spread" for a fighter is 12 in the original rules. In other words, he needs to roll a 14 or better at first level, but at 16th level he only needs to roll a 2 or better. That means a 16th level fighter gets "+12" compared to a first level character. So that's where I topped off my table. Though in my version a fighter achieves it at level 12 instead of level 16. Again this aligns a bit better with AD&D and simplifies things.
I'm hoping that the final product is something that "feels" like playing back in the 70's but with rules that are a lot simpler.
Does what I'm doing make sense?
What name is better? "Level Bonus"? "Experience Bonus"? I don't like "Proficiency Bonus." Is there something even better?
1 Since I've started writing this, I've discovered that this is a bit like something that 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons calls a "proficiency bonus." [back]
2 JOAT is an acronym for "Jack-of-all-Trades." It is a new character class I made to work with talents. note 3 It will be detailed in a future blog post. [back]
3 Talents are a simplified skill system I've developed for Crowfield. They are detailed in this post. [back]
James asked, "Have you decided what game you're going to use?" I didn't have an answer for him, but the answer is "I will be using White Box Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game, but with a lot of house rules." It's so many house rules, in fact, that I wonder if I'm making my own OSR game.
One of the rules I'm changing is the is the rule for savings throws.
Wikipedia says that a saving throw "...is a roll of dice used to determine whether magic, poison, or various other types of attacks are effective against a character..." In other words, it gives a player a chance to avoid some sort of terrible fate, like characters in a novel do.
I'm not trying to re-invent the wheel here. In fact, I very much want Crowfield to feel like an old-school gaming experience. So let's look at how it's been done before.
When D&D first came out in 1974, it had five rather arbitrary categories of saving throws:
In my mind, these categories suck. They're all well and good for things that easily fit into one of the categories, but most situations do not. For example, let's say that Jalice accidentally triggers a trap while trying to disable it. Suddenly a huge, razor sharp blade swings across the hallway! The DM wants to give Jalice a chance to roll out of the way. What category does that fit in?
Because this method was in effect until the second half of the year 2000, this is the method used by most OSR retro-clones.
In 1975, Ken St. Andre fixed a lot of D&D's stupidity when he wrote Tunnels & Trolls. The saving throw mechanic was one of those things he fixed.
In T&T, characters had another ability score: Luck. In essence, this ability score was that character's saving throw no matter what danger they faced. That was both the strength and weakness of this system.
If Jalice is trying to roll out of the way of a swinging scythe, surely her high Dexterity should help her. It doesn't.
If she pricked her finger on a poisoned needle trap, it seems her low Constitution score should hurt her. It doesn't.
To be fair, the D&D system had the same issues. So, this system was much better than D&D's, but it still had its problems.
The Swords & Wizardry retro-clone uses a system kind of like this.
In 1980, (the American) Steve Jackson designed what I feel to be the perfect system for saving throws. It's a lot like T&T's method, except that instead of having a separate ability score the player rolls against the most appropriate one.
So when Jalice tries to avoid the swinging blade, she rolls against her Dexterity. If she's trying to survive the poison, she rolls against her Strength (in TFT, Strength served as the Constitution score as well). If Jalice wants to resist an evil sorcerer's attempt to control her mind, she would roll against her Intelligence.
A very simple system that's intuitive. It's easy for the GM to determine what roll to ask for, and it keeps the game moving.
This system was carried over into Steve Jackson's GURPS in 1986. It was adopted into Tunnels & Trolls with its 7th Edition in 2005 and it's what Dungeons & Dragons started using in 2014 with the publication of its 5th Edition.
As far as I know, no D&D retro-clone uses this method. There's a good reason for this, too. Part of D&D's core design is that characters start off weak and grow in power. In this system your saving throw only improves if your ability scores improve.
In the year 2000, the d20 System was used to power the 3rd edition of D&D. Saving throws in this edition are essentially the same as the 1974 method, except the categories have changed:
I like these a lot. Much like the TFT method, it's fast and easy to use: Jalice tries to avoid the swinging blade with a Reflex save, she survives the poison with a Fortitude save, and she resists the evil sorcerer's mind control with a Will save. Nice and simple.
As far as I know, no retro-clone uses this system. In fact, dislike of this system by some "grognards" was one of the things that led to the OSR and retro-clone movements.
While I like the d20 System method, I like the one based on ability scores better. My plan is to roll saves as follows:
Roll 1d20 + ability score modifier + experience bonus - difficulty factor.
If the result is 11 or better, the character makes the save.
I think that's simple and to the point. What do you think?
Last week I wrote about my idea for a "giant hex." It is a single five-mile hex on the map, but it is filled with giant trees and animals, and it takes 60 miles to cross it. What's really happening is that the party is being shrunk down to 1/12th their normal size when they enter it, and returned to their normal size when they leave.
I got three comments to that post. One actual comment, and 2 messages. I wanted to explore those here.
The first commenter, Ministroni, said:
There would be some things that hint at the difference. Like morning dew drops being the size of basketballs
This is absolutely true! To be honest, though, I don't know if I would have thought about that during the natural flow of play. This is why, around my table, it's important for players to be upfront about what they're doing and why. If this is a player's line of thought, he should ask me outright. "I'm thinking that we might be shrunken, so I'm checking the dew drops in the morning to see if they're the size of basketballs."
I've played with so many players that are reluctant to do that. My only guess is that they've played with a jerk GM that would purposely try to mislead them if the GM knew why they were asking. I am not a jerk. I am my players' biggest fan.
Ministroni also said:
I hope you have a "giant ant" that lifts something far heavier than a scaled up ant could lift
That's the spirit!
This one was left as a comment on the page itself. I like it when readers do that!
I am curious though, say that they've travelled into the hex and fight a group of "giant" rats. After defeating them, one party member decides to skin them, figuring the (assumed) novelty will fetch a good price.
So, then the question becomes, what happens to the pelt? Do they instantly shrink to 1/12th size when the party picks it up? Or would it remain large, but be unaffected as the party leaves the hex such that the skinner finds a small, smelly, rat pelt sitting in their bag?
The player's assumption would be a good one. From my previous post, it should be obvious that I'm a fan of "natural treasures." A giant rat pelt would be worth maybe 300 gold! Even better would be a giant beaver pelt...
Anyway. The short answer is that the rat skin would remain at normal size (i.e., it would shrink from the player's perspective). Leaving the hex just removes the enchantment that's on the players. Because they rat didn't have any enchantment on it, there's nothing to remove.
This would be a powerful clue as to what's happening.
Big Shadow Dragon is one of my players from days gone by. He says:
Why are you playing with the size of the PC's? I just don't see why you're doing it.
I'm doing it because it seems interesting. Players seem to like interesting puzzles.
If I'm ever stuck for something to do, I have the party discover a small, elongated pyramid about the size of a 3x5 index card at the base. Inside it is the corpse of a 4-inch tall humanoid, with a larger head in proportion to the rest of the body. If they look carefully there are teeny-tiny footprints leading away from it. A party will literally spend an hour of real-world time investigating it.
Why?
Because it's novel and interesting and they want to know more.
Why?
Because they're adventurers and adventurers seek out the different. Otherwise they would stay in the safety of the town like everyone else, and wait for the heroes to save the day.
Why?
Because hex after hex of "you enter a wooded hex. Which way to you go?" is dull. It's my job to make sure the sandbox contains toys for the players to play with.
That's why!
Thanks for all the comments! Keep them coming!
This is an idea for a hex or grid on the Crowfield map, somewhere in the Dreadwood.
The area was once the domain of a druid named Ælfride. She cast a spell of protection on her lands. Even though she is long gone, the effects of the spell remain.
The effect is quite simple. Any being (and all their gear, etc) entering the land after the spell was cast shrinks to 1/12th their size while in the region with no saving throw allowed. Thus a 6-foot tall fighter, will shrink down to 6 inches. The tricky part, though, is that the change happens gradually over the course of a quarter-mile or so. Because of this, the characters will be unaware that they're shrinking and instead think that they're entering an area filled with giant flora and fauna.
The spell reverses itself when the players leave the hex. The party suffers no ill effects, and is unaware that it happened to them.
Why is this tricky? Because until the players figure it out, it will severely mess with their mapping. The main play map of the area will be 5 miles per hex (or grid, I haven't decided yet). That means it takes about 2 hours to travel from one hex to the next. But while shrunken, 5 miles of the Giant Land will feel link 60 miles to the characters. Instead of taking 2 hours to cross, it will take 24 hours. Assuming that a party only travels for 8 hours a day, they'll spend 3 days in that hex!
Maybe a picture will help:
The hex marked with the dotted triangle is the "giant hex." If the party starts at hex "A" and travels in a straight line to hex "D," the journey will start normal. As they move into the "giant hex" though, I'll say "you notice that the vegetation around you is larger than normal. After another hour it's huge... you are confronted with a dandelion as tell as a man!" As mentioned above, this one hex will take 24 hours of travel time, and I'll present every two hour block as them entering a new hex. In fact, I'll probably use a map like this to represent that one hex:
On the other hand, if the party travels from "A" to "B" to "C" to "D" then the whole trip would only take 6 hours, even though it was "longer."
From a map making perspective, this should really confuse them. "It takes 3 days to travel from A to D."
Of course, any encounters in the hex will be "giant" bees and "giant" rats, etc. From the player's point of view, they are in a weird "Land of the Giants" until they figure it out.
It's just an idea.
Follow up: The next post contains my responses to some comments that I've received about this post.
This week I thought I would do another creature of Crowfield. This time, though, I'm going to go through the process step by step.
"Encounter Columns" is what Traveller calls an encounter table. This is the table that the referee rolls on when a random animal encounter is needed. (By default, there is a 1:3 chance per day in the wilderness that an animal encounter will occur).
Referees have a choice of using a less detailed 1d6 table, or a more detailed 2d6 table. Because the Crowfield region is comprised of only 3 biomes (the Firelands, Dreadwood, and Tundra), I decided to go with the 2d6 encounter column format for each. We're still working on the Firelands. Here's what that looks like:
| Roll | Result |
|---|---|
| 2 | Scavenger (this will probably be the Sh'hemu) |
| 3 | Omnivore |
| 4 | Scavenger |
| 5 | Omnivore |
| 6 | Herbivore |
| 7 | Herbivore |
| 8 | Herbivore |
| 9 | Carnivore |
| 10 | Event |
| 11 | Carnivore |
| 12 | Carnivore |
This week, let's roll up one of the carnivore slots. I won't know which slot it is until I make them all, as I plan to put the strongest one in the #12 spot and the weakest one in the #9 spot. Likewise, I might end up moving the sh'hemu from #2 to #4 depending what other scavenger I roll up.
We know that the creature is a carnivore. This is what the book tells us about carnivores:
Animals which prey on other animals by attacking and killing them in the face of resistance are classed as carnivores. Carnivores are of five basic types: pouncers, chasers, trappers, sirens, and killers.
So now we have to determine which of those 5 sub-types this creature will be. This is determined by a 2d6 roll on the "Animal Types" table. Because the Firelands are a desert, the Terrain Type table tells us that we apply -3 modifier to this roll. I roll a 3 - 3 = 0. The table tells me that a 0 on the carnivore column is a "siren", and that only 1 is encountered at a time.
Siren: Distinct from the trapper, which creates a trap for its prey, a siren also creates a lure to draw prey to the trap. The trap is treated in much the same manner as that of the trapper, but the lure entails additional consideration. In most cases, the lure will be specific to some animal, but will be unnoticed by humans. In rare cases (throw 11+), the lure will be universal, perhaps a smell or scent, or a mirage or beautiful configuration, which will attract characters into a vulnerable position. Very rarely, the lure will be psionic in nature. Typical terran sirens are the angler fish (its mouth is the trap) and the Venus fly trap.
Ok, so we're dealing with a creature like a venus fly trap? Interesting. Thinking about what the lure could be, I think that it could be made to attract sh'hemu and look like carrion or maybe it could look like a watering hole and end up being something like the sarlacc of Tatooine. I like both of these concepts. Let's make that 2D roll to see if the lure is universal. I rolled an 8, so the lure is specific to the sh'hemu--a fake dead thing is what we're dealing with!
Note: It turns out that I misread the Terrain Type table. The animal type roll was supposed have a +3 instead of a -3. That would make the encounter 1 "pouncer" instead of 1 siren, but I'm attached to siren idea, so I'm going to go forward with it. Maybe I'll save the pouncer for another of the carnivore slots.
Pretty much this step determines if the creature is a fish or a bird. Because fish don't survive in the desert that well, that's not even a possibility on the table.
The table includes a lot of modifiers to use depending on the planet's size and atmosphere. Because this planet is earthlike, none of those apply. If I roll a 10 or better, this creature can fly, otherwise it's earthbound like the rest of us. I'm hoping for less than a 10, because I can't envision a flying corpse. I roll a 7. No wings here.
The next step is to decide how big our fake corpse is. Size also determines its hits (hit dice in D&D terms) and how much damage it does when it attacks.
The terrain type table tells us that this roll has a -3. (Yes, it's really a -3 this time, and not a +3.)
I roll a 5 - 3 = 2. The table tells us that the fake corpse weighs 6 kilograms. That's about 13 pounds. Some googling tells me that's about the size of a large Virginia Opossum. I like that, because the "playing possum" thing works well for a fake corpse. But how is this going to be a threat to a pack of sh'hemu?
The table also tells me that, in Traveller terms, the creature can take 1D/2D hits. That's not a lot. The average man can take 4D/2D. In D&D terms, I think I'm going to call that ½ HD.
The Traveller wounds inflicted would be "-1D". I'm going to translate that as -1, and 1d6-1 is mathematically equivalent to 1d4, so that's the answer.
The table says carnivores get a +8 to this roll. Rolling 10 + 8 = 18, "as pike." Hmm... Something stabby that can attack at a distance. Makes me think of a stinger, like a scorpion's tail. Technically speaking, "stinger" has its own entry on the table, and I didn't roll it. But these names really fit around Traveller's combat tables, where different armor has different effectiveness against different weapons, so we're just using this for inspiration anyway. In fact the book even says that "Weapon types should always be considered to be descriptive of result rather than of strict process."
Okay. I'm picturing something scorpion-like that burrows into the sand leaving something carrion-like on the surface. When a sh-hemu gets close, it attacks with a stinger. Maybe.
Another 2d6 roll, this time with a -1 because it's a carnivore. I roll 11 - 1 = 10. The result is "jack", which is Traveller's equivalent of leather armor. That's Armor Class 12 in D&D terms. I'll give it another +1 due to its small size, so the final AC is 13.
In Traveller Animal speed is measured as a "multiplier times ordinary speed." So a speed of 2 means twice as fast as a normal person.
For a siren, we roll 1d6-4, treating any result less than 0 as a 0. I roll a 2 - 4 = -2, means 0.
That's fine and dandy for Traveller, but for D&D we're going to add a bit more fine tuning. A siren with a speed of 0 makes perfect sense (the Venus flytrap and the sarlacc from Star Wars, for example.) But in D&D it also makes sense to have a creature that moves slower than the normal person, and that's not possible interpreting the results according to the book. I'm going to use this table I just made up to determine speed:
| Roll | Traveller Speed | D&D Speed | D&D Equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 12 | Normal man |
| 0 | 1 | 9 | Lightly encumbered man |
| -1 | 1 | 6 | Encumbered man |
| -2 | 1 | 3 | Heavily encumbered man |
| -3 | 1 | 1 | ??? |
| -4 | 1 | 0 | a rock |
The next step determines how a creature will behave when the party encounters it. Will it attack, flee, or wait?
In normal Traveller play, when the encounter starts the GM would roll to see if it attacks. If it doesn't attack, the GM would then roll to see if it flees. If it doesn't flee, it just waits. In the case of herbivores, you would first check to see if it flees, then check to see if it attacks.
That's too much dice rolling for me, so I use math to turn that into a single d20 roll.
Being a "siren," changes things up, though. A siren will automatically attack if it surprises its victim.
As for fleeing, the table says to roll 1d6+3. I roll 4 + 3 = 7.
So if the fake carrion has surprise, it attacks. If it doesn't, there's a 58% chance it will run away, otherwise it will lay in wait. "Never drop the con," I guess.
The checklist actually says "Apply common sense as required." Nice. Let's do that.
Ok--we have this slow, small creature that preys on a larger, faster creature. It relies on surprise, but it doesn't do enough damage to kill the creature outright. How does that work? Well, the description listed the venus fly trap as an example. It also references the "trapper" class of carnivores, which lists the spider as an example. Spiders are venomous and cast webs to entrap their prey. The Albany pitcher plant allows its prey to fall into sticky digestive juices from which it cannot escape. That gives me some ideas.
I had originally given it a +1 bonus to armor class because of its size, but I'm going to say that its slow speed cancels that out.
| Armor Class | 12 |
| Hit Dice | ½ |
| Move | 90' (30') |
| Attacks | Tubule |
| Damage | 1d4 |
| Number Appearing | 1 |
| Save | |
| Morale | 8 |
| Treasure | special |
| Intelligence | Animal (2) |
| Alignment | Neutral |
| Monster Type | Normal Animal |
| Terrain | Desert |
| % in Lair | n/a |
| Special Attacks | Glue Spray, Blood Drain |
| Special Defenses | Nil |
| Magic Resistance | Normal |
| Size | S (13 pounds) |
Reaction (1d10):
| Roll | Reaction |
|---|---|
| automatic | Attacks |
| 1 - 6 | Flees |
| 7 - 10 | Waits |
The pseudo-carrion is a solitary creature that lives in the desert. It is about the size of an American Opossum, but resemble a large, mangy, red and white house cat, with a hairless tail.
The pseudo-carrion mainly feeds upon sh'hemu, but will gladly eat anything that falls into its trap. It "hunts" by playing dead, and emitting the stench of decaying flesh. The red blotches of fur on its body can easily be mistaken for blood. When a sh'hemu (or other prey) touches the seemingly lifeless body, the pseudo-carrion springs to life, spraying a glue-like mist in all directions. Anything within ten feet of the beast will be covered in the glue unless they make a Dex save at -2. The glue sticks instantly, rendering those affected effectively immobile.
The round after releasing the glue, the pseudo-carrion will leisurely walk to the nearest glued victim (it's immune to its own glue) and attack with its tail. The tail is a rigid tubule that will will do 1d4 hits on a successful attack. The tubule is then left in the victim, and automatically drains 1 hit of blood from the victim each round. The creature will withdraw the tubule after 2d4 rounds and waddle away, bloated.
Victims are allowed a STR save every round to free themselves from the glue. Friends can assist if they can lasso the victim with a rope or something.
There's a 10% chance that the pseudo-carrion will inject its victim with eggs during the attack. Victims with eggs will feel fine for a week, then start to suffer from weakness (-1 Str per day) for 3d6 days, at which time the baby pseudo-carrion will erupt from the victims flesh doing 3d6 damage. A Cure Disease spell will remove the eggs.
Treasure: As animals, pseudo-carrion care nothing for things that humans value. Alchemists and wizards, however, will pay 150 gold for a full glue-gland from a pseudo-carrion. A full gland is one that has not produced a glue mist in the last 24 hours. Given their skittish nature, the only way to obtain one is to kill the pseudo-carrion in a single blow before it has time to react. Skilled pseudo-carrion hunters use ranged weapons for this. Even then, there is a 30% chance that the blow will damage the gland.
Food value: Pseudo-carrion are edible, but not desirable due to their death-stench. A single pseudo-carrion produces about 2 pounds of raw, foul-smelling meat.
That's it. I like the process. If you like it, you can find it in Book 3: Worlds and Adventures of the original "LBB" edition of Traveller.
Does anyone else know of any "monster maker" systems? I'd love to look at more of them. I wonder if there was ever one in Dragon magazine or something.
Truth be known, the Crowfield campaign is an attempt to have a fantasy game that emulates the sci-fi classic Traveller RPG. That is why the focus is on sand-box exploration, mercantile trade, and human-centric play.
One of the neat things about original Traveller is that it had a method of generating alien animals that an explorer might encounter when visiting a new planet. This was a clever solution to a problem: if a player might visit a hundred worlds, how do you have unique encounters on each planet without having a "monster manual" that contains thousands of unique beasts? You have tables that generates the beats for each world.
I decided to try to translate that table for my use. Below is the first creature that I rolled up. Let me know what you think.
| Armor Class | 11 |
| Hit Dice | 2 |
| Move | 120' (40') |
| Attacks | Hooves |
| Damage | 1d6 |
| Number Appearing | 1d6 |
| Morale | 7 |
| Treasure Type | special |
| Intelligence | Animal (2) |
| Alignment | Neutral |
| Monster Type | Normal Animal |
| Terrain | Desert |
| % in Lair | n/a |
| Special Attacks | Nil |
| Special Defenses | 25% chance of Fear Aura |
| Magic Resistance | Normal |
| Size | M (220 pounds) |
Reaction (1d20):
| Roll | Reaction |
|---|---|
| 1 - 17 | Attacks |
| 18 - 19 | Flees |
| 20 | Waits |
Sh'hemu (singular & plural) vaguely resemble small, brown and tan zebras with sharp teeth for rending flesh off of carrion. They are smaller than a zebra, and are approximately the same size as a North American white-tail deer.
Sh'hemu are carnivores, but they only hunt when truly desperate. They prefer to come across recently killed animals (or humans!), and use their numbers to scare off the original predator. When more than 1 is encountered, they always attack in groups of 2 or 3 against any given foe.
As indicated, Sh'hemu aren't hunters. While aggressive, they only attack to protect themselves and their meal. They will stop attacking when their opponents retreat. They will not pursue fleeing opponents.
There's a 20% chance that any given pack contains a sh'hemu that emits a fear aura. Any creature that comes within 60' of such a Sh'hemu must make a saving throw or flee in the opposite direction at its max speed for 1d10 rounds. Sh'hemu are immune to the fear aura of other sh'hemu.
Treasure: Sh'hemu don't have treasure in the traditional sense, but a pelt is worth 2d6 × 10 gold coins. If the party takes special precautions during the fight, then a pelt can fetch 3d6 × 10 gold coins instead. Special precautions means that every character attacking a given sh'hemu must accept a -4 on their attack roll and a -1 on their damage roll. It takes 2d6 × 10 minutes to skin a sh'hemu, potentially exposing the party to further random encounters.
Food value: Sh'hemu meat is potentially toxic to humans. Eating cooked sh'hemu meat requires a saving throw vs Poison, or the character will suffer from delirium (-1d6 to Intelligence and Wisdom). Characters who fail the saving throw are allowed a new one each day to see if the toxins have run their course. Recovery doesn't begin until then. Lost stat points will recover at 1 point per day.
In my last post you can see that I'm trying to decide which game I'm going to use for my upcoming Crowfield campaign. I had set my sights on Warrior, Rogue & Mage (WR&M for short). Unlike the other systems on the list, I wasn't really all that familiar with this one. I had read the rules and was impressed, but sometimes the way a game reads and the way it plays are very different. I mentioned to James that I wanted to run a quick combat, and he volunteered. I told him he would be fighting a skeleton.
The first step was for James to make a quick character. Because this was just intended for a test and not for long term campaign, I told him not to think about it too hard. This is what he came up with:
Nameless Character
Warrior 6
Rogue 2
Mage 2
Hit Points: 12
Fate Points: 2
Mana Points: 4
Base Defense: 8
Skills: Athletics, Awareness, Sword
Talent: Tough As Nails
Every character starts out with 250 silver. I told James that I got the impression that armor was very important in the game. He took my advice and bought "heavy plate", which was the best armor he could afford. On top of that he added a large shield and a sword. Together they were 140 silver, meaning he would still have another 110 to spend on normal adventuring gear if we were playing a campaign.
This seems like a reasonable starting character.
As we said before, his base defense was 8. The armor adds +7 to his effective defense, and the shield adds another +2 . This means his effective defense was 8 + 7 + 2 = 17. Yowza!
The armor also gives an armor penalty of 9, but that only applies to spell casters. We can ignore that.
I pulled the stats for the skeleton straight from the book. I used the variant with rusted armor, just to add to the challenge.
| Stat | Character | Skeleton |
|---|---|---|
| Warrior | 6 | 3 |
| Rogue | 2 | 3 |
| Mage | 2 | 0 |
| Hit Points | 12 | 9 |
| Fate Points | 2 | 0 |
| Mana Points | 4 | 0 |
| Defense | 17 | 8 |
| Skills | Athletics, Awareness, Sword | None |
| Talent | Tough As Nails | Half damage except from blunt weapons or axes |
There was no roleplay to lead up to this, so initiative would be determined by a die roll.
The skeleton rolled a 6! WR&M uses exploding dice, so it gets to roll again. The second roll was a 3. 6 + 3 = 9.
James has the Awareness skill, so he gets a +2. Still, he needs the dice to explode to beat the skeleton. He rolled a 3. 3 + 2 = 5.
The skeleton gets the jump on the character and gets to go first.
The skeleton goes first. Right away I see that there's going to be an issue. The character's effective defense is 17. That means the skeleton needs to roll 17 or better to hit the character.
Let me repeat that: The skeleton needs to roll 17 or better on a d6 to hit the character.
I'm exaggerating a little. The skeleton has a Warrior rank of 3. That means +3 to the roll. So the actual d6 roll only needs to be a 14 or better. The only way for that to happen is if the skeleton rolls a 6, then rolls a 6 for the second roll, then rolls 2 or better on the third roll. Anydice.com tells me that there is an approximate 2.3% chance of this happening. This means that the skeleton will hit the character about once every 43 rounds.
Anyway, I roll the dice. It's a 4 (rolled) + 3 (warrior) = 7. It missed. No surprise.
The skeleton's defense is 8. Which means that the character needs to roll a 8 or better on a d6. But the character has a Warrior of 6, plus he's using his sword and has the sword skill, so he gets another +2.
Another problem.
The character needs to roll 1d6 + 8 and get an 8 or better. I don't need anydice.com to figure this one out: the character will never miss. WR&M doesn't even have a "automatically miss on a '1'" rule.
James gets a 5 (rolled) + 6 (Warrior) + 2 (sword skill) = 13. He hits. No surprise.
He rolled another 5 for damage, but it's reduced to 2 because of the skeleton's talent. The skeleton now has 7 hit points remaining.
We didn't finish the fight.
We didn't see the point. The character will never miss, and the skeleton will almost never hit. Dealing an average of 2 hp per round, the character will finish off the skeleton in about 4 rounds. I guess that means that there's a 10% or so chance that the character might have been hit at some point in the combat, but it wasn't enough risk to make things interesting.
The exercise wasn't a waste of time. It showed me that Warrior, Rogue & Mage will not be the game I use for the next campaign. I will look over the rules some more in case I made a mistake somewhere, in which case I'll give it another try.
If you're familiar with WR&M, leave a comment or drop me a line to let me know what I could have done to make it better. For now, though, I think I'm going to go with a D&D retroclone of some sort.
First of all, thanks for all the feedback from last week's post. Even though there was only one message posted, I received several other responses. Universally (except for James), everyone thinks we should go with the "all three terrains" option, so that's what I'll do!
This week's quandary is the rules. Games needs rules, so I need to start deciding the game system that I'm going to use for this campaign.
The first step is to identify what I want in a game:
So I considered a lot of rules, and these are the ones that made it to the "short list."
| Game | Notes |
|---|---|
| Basic Fantasy | Kind of a clone of basic D&D but with some more modern sensibilities. Doesn't have alignment, and uses the stupid saving throw categories from the original game. At least it does ascending armor class. |
| Legends of the Ancient World | This is a sharp little game. It's kind of like a very stripped down version of The Fantasy Trip. One down side is that it's actually written for solo "choose you own adventure" type books, and not tabletop role-playing, but I think it could work. It also doesn't include travels rules, but I think those will be easy enough to write. |
| Tunnels & Trolls | While it's not a free game, there is a stripped down free version, and the PDF of the earlier versions are pretty cheap (1st Edition, 4th, and 5th). |
| TunnelQuest | Another sharp little game. This was my introduction to "only the players roll in combat." The magic system is a little wonky, but other than that, I like it. |
| Warrior, Rogue & Mage | A nice little rules light game that runs with a concept that I've been thinking about (though it did it years before I thought about it). |
| White Box: Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game | Another clone of OD&D. Nice and simple. |
How about it? Do any of these make sense? Should I use my own game instead? Is there another one that I haven't thought of?
For dramatic purposes, I want settlements to be few and far between. This forces the player characters to travel through "untamed wilderness" between towns. On Earth, this is a very unrealistic situation as people tend to clump together and spread out, but not too far from the nearest settlement. I came up with one obvious solution, with three different variations:
I spoke to James about this and he really liked the Firelands better than any of the other options. As I was writing this, though, it occurred to me that There's really no need to just pick one. In fact if we look at the map of my gaming world, we can see that there's spots where these different areas meet:
(The green is the Dreadwood, the white is the Tundra, the tan/yellow is the Firelands, while the green dots in the Great Sea make up the archipelago of Okeanos.)
If I put it in the area with the red circle, players can cross between Firelands, Tundra and Dreadwood depending which way they go.
So what do you think? All three? Just one? If so, which one?
As I discussed in Part 1, I'm designing a new fantasy campaign, and I'm seeking your help and feedback. This post I want to concentrate on where the player characters come from.
Last post I said that I wanted the campaign to be about exploration into unknown lands. While this sounds simple on the surface, it's actually harder than it seems. Here are some of the issues I see off the top of my head:
As I hinted above, I think I will solve these problems by transplanting the party, much like Odysseus and Voyager. What's different, though, is that I'm going to transplant not just the player characters, but the entire town where they live. This way there's an entire town of replacement PCs. Not only that, but the PCs' friends and family will have all been transported as well.
So, this is what I've come up with so far. There are two parts: the player facing part, and the "behind the scenes" part.
The players are native to the town of Crowfield. It is an unassuming town, overseen by Baron Crowfield. There's nothing particularly special about it, other than it was once the home of Delicia the Saintess.
In the center of the village green was a statue of the great cleric, holding a blue-silver sphere between her hands. Legend says that before she died(? vanished?) St. Delicia prophesized that the sphere would be shattered on Crowfield's darkest day. But that was nearly two centuries ago, and the sphere survived many a drunken school boy's attempt to shatter it.
Then, one early winter night, everything changed. The autumn crops had just been brought into the town from the outlying manors and villages, and it was the night of the great winter fete. As midnight approached, there was a sound like no other sound anyone's ever heard. The black night sky was split from west to east with a ribbon of fire that was so hot the snow melted. Fire began to fall from the sky, and ...
...just like that it was the next morning. Everyone was fine. The town was fine. The sphere was shattered.
But beyond the walls of the town is a strange landscape. The fields that were once there are gone, as are the paths and roads.
Lord Crowfield is concerned. He doesn't know what's happening, but he knows the town's stores are only enough to feed the population until next summer. He needs to find out if his vassal manors are still operating so that they can provide food. If not, he needs to find other sources of food.
While Crowfield was celebrating its winter fete on earth, in the heavens there was a battle. Gob (the god of chaos) attacked and defeated Hume (goddess of law) . The ribbon of fire that everyone saw was Hume's lifeless form falling to the earth.
That was 10,000 years ago.
When the sphere shattered, it locked Crowfield in time. Great civilizations rose and fell around it, completely unaware that the town existed.
It's now a primitive time. Gob still rules the heavens. Isolated settlements exist here and there, but under Gob's dominion there is great distrust. Each settlement is its own tiny kingdom, and tries to be as self sufficient as possible. Any interaction between settlements is as likely to be war as peace.
But why did Crowfield get unlocked in time now? Somewhere, not far away, the body of Hume has arisen...
So that's what I'm working with so far, though of course details are very likely to change as I develop this more. My next post will probably be about the world around Crowfield.
What do you think? Is it stupid? Will it work? Do you have suggestions? I'm listening!
After my melancholy previous post, I've decided to start prepping another campaign. I'll go ahead and play with a group of strangers on Roll20.
James recommended that I post my planning process here. That way I can get input and feedback from my readers. "There's one problem with that," I said. "I don't have that many readers, and almost none of those comment."
"If you build it," he said, "they will come." Well, maybe not those exact words, but that's what he meant.
So, to the campaign.
Here's my initial thoughts for the campaign and the world:
That's my rough idea in a nut shell. Some of those bullets lead to other choices that need to be made. Some bullets narrow down the possible choices. All that will be covered in future posts.
So what do you think? Want to help me make this campaign?