Crisis in Crowfield

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]

James mocks me (kindly) for the amount of math I use when I’m designing a world. James is going to mock me for this post.

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.

Starships in Crowfield?

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.

Mapping Around Crowfield: Rough Sketch

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).

Overland Travel around Crowfield

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.

Monster Never Miss Part 2: Swinfar vs the Skeletons

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.