Roman Buildings

The blog titled "Paul's Bods" has been doing a lot of scratch built Roman buildings lately:

Paul's Bods

I've also seen some PDF's for paper-built Roman Villas which might be useful as is or as patterns for a more solid building

Soviet version of "The Hobbit" from 1985

No joke,

The Soviets made a movie version of "The Hobbit" back in 1985, which you can see online at this site:

Commie Hobbit

It's all in Russian, of course, but there you go.

Progess and a Find

I've finished my 8 plastic Warhammer Knights.   I'm pretty happy with them.  I'd post some pictures, but I'm having camera difficulties.

I decided to put aside all my monkeys (I have 2 sets of armed monkey-men, 1 I bought, 1 Jason gave me;  I giant ape that Marlon left with me, and a pack of Flying Monkeys with crossbows I got at the Convention).  I figure that the armed monkeys aren't campaign appropriate, so I'll just wait on the whole monkey crew for now.

I'm basing, gluing and priming 4 more dismounted crusades knights and 8 longbow men from the Convention for my next project.  Some of them might have done ok for the Masked Archer, but I think the guy I've already painted is still the best choice.

Finally, I made a find at the Dollar Tree today.   They had some excellent Pine Trees for Christmas Garden displays,  2 trees in a blister for $1.  I bought 4 blisters, but might go get some more once I've gotten them open to have a closer look.  They seem unbeatable for the price.

GW Knights

I've painted 4 out of my 8 plastic Warhammer mounted knights.   While they glued together much easier than I had expected, I found the figures too "busy" for my taste.  They have really elaborate helmets and whatever you call the big clothy thing that covers their horses.   After the first 2, I decided that I instead of painting the horse-suit and helmet parts various colors, I dramatically reduced the painted detail on the 3rd and 4th figures, and I think it improved their overall appearance.  The clash of colors and the overall business made the finished figures too garish. 

Game Room Update

Monday I hauled out the old computer desk from the game room and replaced it with a large set of wire shelves.   Mission Accomplished (clearing the way was the hard part).  I've got some reorganization to get to.   So, be prepared for a slightly different landscape on Sunday.   Here's hoping the trashmen actually haul off the desk tomorrow.

Actually

The Masked Archer figure is starting to remind me of Batman.

Miniatures Pics, recent work

First up are 4 dismounted knights from the later crusades era, which I bought at Fall-In.   I painted the 2 on the left with "platinum" color, and the 2 on the right with "pewter" color.   In general, I think I like the pewter better, but the platinum does have some advantage when viewed at a distance.

Next, I have my two masked men.   The one on the left is my choice for the "Masked Archer of the Apocalypse", but the one on the right is a close runner-up.   My final choice is mainly because the one on the left has a bow and quiver on his back, and the one on the right only has daggers.

Next I have a few more Outlaws that I bought from MegaMiniatures (R.I.P., alas) when I got the masked men.

Finally, in the spirit of the season, here's a learned wizard, who, because of poor color choice on my part, ended up looking more like Father Christmas than anything else.

Miniatures Rules: Movement Trays and Unit Size

I'm starting to put together a set of miniatures rules for the side game.   My goal is to get a system that is fast and playable, with as little math and figuring as possible.  

Gygax and Perrin's Chainmail, is a good start, but gets all bogged down in the post-melee morale phase.   Tony Bath's two systems from the 60's are also pretty good, but also have some fiddly bits in the morale department.    Pig Wars was always fun, but I'd like to get away from the playing cards system.  Also, movement is handled by individual figure, and I'd like to do unit movement.  Warhammer Ancients is more detail than I want to get into, and is too historically specific for our needs.  The WRG systems and DBM systems by Phil Barker are far too fiddly for what I want to do.

I'm also looking to make the system fit my particular miniatures collection and system (so I don't need rules for Elephants and Chariots), and I want a system where individual figures are removed to indicate casualties.

My first step is Basing Units.  I want to use a standard sized unit Movement Tray, and thought that 4x6 would be ideal.    Here's my first step:

UNITS AND FIGURE BASING

INFANTRY:

Each Infantry Battalion is mounted on a single movement tray that measures 4 inches by 6 inches.

A Battalion must contain at least 6 figures and no more than 24 figures. If casualties ever reduce the number of figures to 5 or less, the unit breaks and flees the battle field or surrenders.

MISSILE TROOPS

Each Battalion of Archers, Crossbowmen, Slingers or Javelin-men is mounted on a single movement tray that measures 4 inches by 6 inches. Each Battalion must contain at least 4 figures but not more than 18 figures. If casualties ever reduce the number of figures to 3 or less, the unit breaks and flees the battle-field or surrenders.

SHOCK CAVALRY

Each Troop of Shock/Melee Cavalry is mounted on a single movement tray that measures 4 inches by 6 inches. Each Troop must contain at least 4 figures, but no more than 8 figures. If casualties ever reduce the number of figures to 3 or less, the unit breaks and flees the battlefield or surrenders.

SKIRMISH CAVALRY

Each Troop of Horse Archers or Javelin Cavalry is mounted on a single movement tray that measures 4 inches by 6 inches. Each Troop must contain at least 2 figures, but no more than 8 figures. If casualties ever reduce the number to a single figure the unit breaks and flees the battlefield or surrenders.

Masked Archer of the Apocalypse

I've painted up a pretty decent miniature for my character "The Masked Archer of the Apocalypse" and even painted in a little mask for him.   I think this may be the first time I've ever bought and painted a miniature specifically for a character.   I always buy and paint from a GM's perspective, looking to provide things that can be used for a vast variety of purposes. 

I've also been thinking about changing the Masked Archer from a Thief to an Assassin:

Both have the same to hits, both get backstab and move silently/hide in shadows

Advantages to Thief:  locks, traps, hear noise, climb walls and pick pockets.  10% XP bonus, and faster XP track.

Advantages to Assassin:  damage bonus, more cleaves, can wear heavier armor if desired, may use shield, d6 hit points instead of d4.

It seems more and more desirable to make the switch.   I know the rest of the party would like having a dancing trap-monkey/chest opener.  But, the assassin would be more useful in a fight overall.

Vague idea for rampart and stockade, using what we've learned

Putting together what we learned about Salt Dough and Plaster casting.   A rampart and stockade combo might be a doable thing.

Step one:  make a 6" section of rampart out of salt dough.

Step two:  top the rampart with a stockade, either carved somehow or made from real sticks.

Step three: use aluminum foil to make plaster molds.   Cast pieces.

Repeat for a corner piece and maybe gate section.


Sweet jumping merciful blood-stained gods!

Do I indeed have a real stockade piece?

It's jumping all around my memory.

Calm down.

The piece I remember is actually much shorter than would make a proper rampart.  It might have been for 15mm, and only comes to chest height.

I need to get home and have a look.

Maybe a lie-down too.

What terrian do we need?

I'm trying to think of what sort of terrain pieces we might get a lot of use out of.  I'm not really interested in one-shot items that would end up just taking up space.   I like things that can be used over and over again (like the infinitely repeated hills, or any sort of monkey miniature).

I think we could use a few more hills to spice things up.   Maybe a few buildings with removable roofs.  A great hall might come in handy, especially one with a removeable roof. 

I'd like to fix my fortress walls.   They're pretty cool, but I totally failed to make the angled edge line up properly with one another.   I could probably use the help of a better carpenter than I (meaning anyone in the world except my wife and daughters) to shave off the longish sections.

Some sort of River or creek might be nice.   I had a two section river that looked pretty good, only it was built to span a table I no longer possess, and doesn't fit our current table.  The piece was also too thick, and you had to step up to get onto the riverbank from the surrounding terrain.

Do we need a better stockade or earthen rampart system?   We've used my cheap ramparts a billion times, and they have their flaws (though the price couldn't be beat).    The stockade I had for on top of the ramparts are long since gone.

We might be able to do a plaster-cast of the cottages I have, using the method Andrew and I learned at Fall-In,  if we wanted to try using plaster and really need more cottages.

Painting Progress

I haven't done any painting since the Crab People and White Apes for Mutants and Muskets, but the Convention got my wheels greased again.   I had a box of 8 GW knights that had sat on my shelf for a year or so, I managed to glue those together and prime them this weekend (I'm still leary of gluing together 30 Vikings, but we'll see).  I also primed 8 ape commandos, and a half dozen thieves and rangers (possibly for "The Masked Archer of the Apocalypse") and 4 of my dismounted crusader knights I bought at the con.  

I forced myself to prepare a lot of my less recent purchases, rather than shoving them aside and doing all my new toys up front.  But, I do admit the GW knights are all fancy-like, not as plain-jane as the historical knights I've gotten more recently.

Granulairty of the Strategic Game

The most important question about the Strategic level of the miniatures campaign is granularity of the moves.

Option A:  Diplomacy Style:  in the game Diplomacy, each space can hold one and only one UNIT  (an army or fleet).   If we took that outlook it has several advantages and disadvantages:  
a) Every Battle is Even:  since only one unit will ever encounter 1 unit, the troops on both sides will be even.   Depending on time and number of players for the table-top battle, each side gets an equal number of points to construct the miniature army doing the fighting, at the time of the table-top fight.  Advantage
b)Ease of Record Keeping:  all you need to know is how many units you can support, where they are and to send in a simple move (Army 1 moves from A3 to A4).  There's no need to keep track of how many of what type is in which army.  Advantage.
c) Lack of Persistence: there's no sense of units persisting from battle to battle, they can't gain experience or a unit history.   Army #1 might be mostly cavalry one battle, but mostly infantry the next battle.  Disadvantage

Option B:  Points Model:  players can make any number of stacks of troops, but each is only noted as a number of "points".  The points are converted into troops when a battle actually occurs.  This option looses the "Every Battle is Even" advantage, but the record-keeping isn't all that much worse.    There are systems for quick resolution of minor clashes that allow for a much wider range of outcomes (I've used one from the Chivalry and Sorcery RPG from the 80's for example).  The lack of persistence and characterization remains.

Option C:  Lord and Master model:  each player has a number of characters who raise and lead units.   Lot more persistence, lot more character, can be significantly more record keeping (but certainly doable, as past experience indicates).   The difficulty is meshing the units raised with the Miniatures available.   If the goal is to have actual miniature battles every few weeks or so, this option is more difficult.  I would actually want to scale back from the version in Triumphant.

Option D:  The Full Tony:  following Tony Bath's Hyboria plan, you can go into incredible detail of troops raised, taxes collected, immense number of characters and character actions.   Perhaps more than I want as a side project.  I can show folks his suggestions if they are interested.   I actually think that Lord and Master is a much more manageable model than this one, but it is the most detailed.

Lord and Master

All this talk of a remote-play campaign to connect some miniatures battles, jogged some memories in me.   Back in the early 1990's, when I was more or less game-less, I ran a series of play-by-mail games called "Lord and Master" with 4-6 players a piece.   It really was play-by-mail, snail mail that is.   I think people phoned in their moves and I photocopied and colored the map with colored pencils.

I discovered that I had electronic versions of the last of the versions of the game, Lord and Master Triumphant, which ran to at least 17 turns.   I rendered the rule book into a pdf, which is available here:

Lord and Master

The Lead

I really have to make some kind of inventory of my lead supplies before anything can be nailed down.

Just working off the top of my head:

I know I have at least 120  Saxon infantry, plus some Saxon archers, and then 30-40 Gothic infantry, and 30 or more Gothic/Lombard cavalry, and some 30 Frankish infantry.   These guys all are right for the Northrons, so I'd imagine we should have 2 Northron factions at least (it's also why the Spanish game was appealing to me, Visigoths, Vandals and Swabians would all use these guys).

I know I have more than 10 but less than 20 Huns, not enough for any real Easterling army.  I have a scattered number (20-30??) of Egyptian and Arabian infantry and 10-20 Carthagian Infantry, again I don't think I could really field a Southron army of any real sort.  But I may have more than I think.

For Romans, I have 12 super-heavy cavalry, 10 medium-ish cavalry, and 20 or so lightish cavalry, and  at least 60 infantry of various sorts (maybe quite a bit more), at least one solid army, maybe 2.

Of Picts and Irish, I think I have a dozen horse and at least 40 foot, maybe enough for a faction of Westerlings.   Perhaps they could be used in combination with the Huns and some  of my more generic barbarians to make up the Bastarnae.

Especially once I get my new stuff painted, I could probably field a solid generic medieval army of some sort (20 or so mounted knights,   15-20 long bows, a dozen crossbows, and a random assortment of dismounted knights and soldiers).

I honestly don't know how many Orcs I have.   I had 30 on the table 2 weeks ago, and that wasn't all of them.   Probably another 20 at least.   But, I know I have less than 20 Old Ones.   I've got a decent number of skeletons and zombies too. 

I'd kind of like to avoid putting Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Halflings, Giants, Dragons or Trolls on the table for this project. I'd like the game to be more of an ancients-surrogate game rather than a full-blown fantasy emulation.


I have a few bolt-shooters, and maybe a catapult or 2.  I could put two stone forts on the table.  I know I made some siege ladders at some point too.

Refining a Baldgarth Campaign

After looking at the Baldgarth world map, I think an interesting place to have a miniatures campaign might be the North-Eastern province in Roricon.   This would be where Roricon (19), Provere (20), Ost-Gault (14) and Bastarnae (15) all meet.   So, Northrons, Easterlings, Ardeans would be easy, and an Old Ones fortress not impossible, since Roricon is a series of petty fiefs.  I could even use my new knights.

Campaign Scenario Ideas

After reading through Tony Bath's "How to set up a wargaming campaign", I've had a couple of ideas.   These are what he called "mini-campaigns", I don't want to do anything like his legendary Hyboria game, just something to give a context to a miniature battle once a month or so.

#1)  Spain:  420 AD:   around 410 AD, three barbarian tribes:  the Vandals, Suevi (Swabians), and Alans crossed the Rhine River, ravaged Roman Gaul and then passed over into Spain and took over the place.   Around 420, the Romans paid the Visigoths to drive these tribes out of Spain.  The  succeeded, but ended up taking it over for themselves.
         I have a map of Roman Spain and could make it into a campaign map.   We could have a 4 person campaign (Alans, Swabians, Vandals and Visigoths) or a 5 person campaign (add a Roman player).  Or another variant might be combining Alans and Swabians into one faction and have a 4 person game with a Roman player.
      Most of the miniatures I have are 5th century Romans and Barbarians, (and the Saxons and Franks I have wouldn't look different from the Vandals and Swabians), so it would make a solid historical campaign.  I wouldn't get to use my new late medieval knights, nor any of the fantasy miniatures, but still I've got more than enough period-approriate figures to make a whole campaign work.

#2)  Fake Country, Create an Army:   I could draw up a fake map, then make a grand catalogue of the troops I have available, and allow people to create their own army lists from the available figures.   We could allow units of dwarves, orcs, skeletons etc. if we wanted to.  On the upside, this would allow many people to have a lot of imput, but on the downside, it would require a lot of people to have a lot of imput.  It would also mean a more gigantic selection of miniatures would apply.
      We could have just as many factions as players that were interested.

#3)  Baldgarth:  I could pick another section of the continent we're playing ACKS on and whip up a campaign set there.    It sort of blends some advantages of the other two options, bust also some of the disadvantages; but I don't have anything in mind off the top of my head.

Tooling around with a miniatures campaign

I've been thinking of some ideas for a minitures campaign, using most what I've got.   Some basic ideas would be to run the campaign angle on-line, either like a boardgame, or actually use a boardgame for the structure.   I'd have a quick and dirty resolution system for many of the fights (an Avalon Hill style odds-chart, die roll) but once a month or so I'd pick the most interesting encounter and fight that out on the table top.  

The players of the overall campaign needn't necessarily be the same ones who fought out the battles,

I'm thinking that, now that my wife works evenings, I could have the miniatures game on some weekday evening.  The trouble is, I'd assume that Fridays might work out the best for people, but I couldn't start until 6:30 or 7:00 on Fridays and wouldn't have any set-up time then, since my folks are over for dinner that night every week.

Well, I'll keep thinking.

Train Guys: The Dangers of Rhetorical Irony

After Fall-In, I posted the following on THE MINIATURES PAGE (TMP) message board:

"I went to Fall In this weekend and had a great time. But, Sunday I was driving around the old hometown and passed by a model train store. My wife turns to me and says "Were there any train guys at your convention."
My first thought was "Train guys? Those jerks? Yuck."
Then I got to thinking, whether there was indeed any real overlap between the two superficially similar hobbies.
I mean I can't remember meeting war gamers who admitted to also being model train guys, but that doesn't mean there aren't such animals out there.
I also know most war gamers have gone into train stores at one time or another looking for buildings or trees. I also did use some of the buildings from my train set (which I had when I was 10, and put aside soon after) for terrain for a recent post-apocalyptic game.
So, my question is whether there are any significant number of TMPers out there who are also Model Train enthusiasts?"

Apparently, the irony of a toy-soldier guy calling toy-train guys "jerks" was lost on at least one fellow.   He called me a bad person for calling train guys jerks.   I, of course, immediately apologized, but it did serve as a reminder to keep a firm hand on the rhetorical irony in a purely written context.

Gangs of Rome

On Saturday, Andrew and I played in a game called "Gangs of Rome" at the Fall-In convention.   It was set in the 80's BC during the struggles between the political factions in Rome.   There were 2 scenarios, in the first Andrew and I were the two Consuls Sulla and Pompeius.   On our team was also the son of Pompeius--Pompeius Junior.   Our job was to escape from the forum and get back to our houses, so that the rabble-rousers couldn't force us to allow a popular vote on suffrage for the Italian towns.  We each had a stand of about 12-15 supporters, and were faced by gangs of our enemies, and several neutral players. 

I was bushwhacked by a mob of commoners, but managed to defeat them.   Andrew bought off one gang of enemies, but another beat up Pompeius Junior's guys badly.  Then this gang of gladiatiors showed up behind where Junior and I were.    I outran Junior, bribed one neutral mob to turn against our enemies and found I had an unopposed road home, so home I went.  Andrew also found himself in the clear and got home.   There was a huge brawl among the enemy and the various bribed groups, and Junior got captured, but then paid off his captors.   Some goons tried to bust into Andrew's house, but he sent them packing.   So, all in all we pretty much won hands down.

The funny thing was that Andrew bribed this one guy with some of the plastic coins we were given.  They could be used to sacrifice to the gods for re-rolls, to hire additional men and so forth.  The thing is we both thought that this guy's victory conditions involved collecting cash, and that's why he was bribed.  But, it was no such thing.  I think he was really supposed to be on the other guy's team, but just liked the idea of getting his hands on the plastic money.  So, part of our victory involved one guy just being naturally venal for fake plastic money.

The second scenario was more of a straight up fight, Sulla and his legions swarm into the city to crush Marius and his popular forces.  This time I was Marius, and I rolled really well in a long brawl with Sulla's men in the street and managed to fight my way to the gate and escape.  I lost track of what was happening on the other side of the board, but it looked bloody too.

The terrain was pretty darn awesome, and the system was super fast.  Nobody was sitting down or waiting his turn.   Moves were simultaneous until you got in visual range.   The GM would call a new turn when his egg-timer ran out, and the melees ran in a sort of "real time".  There were as many rounds as you could get in before the GM called a new move. 

The game was fast, exciting and a boat-load of fun.  

(I was going to upload picture of Sulla, but my window's machine crashes every time I try to add a picture to a blog post.  I should have done this on my Ubuntu machine).
 

Airfix Robin Hood

I bought a package of Airfix  HO-scale (approx 20mm) Robin Hood figures through Amazon the other day.  My brother had a set of these when I was a kid, and I needed to reach the "free shipping" threshold for a book I was ordering, so I picked them up.    There are about 50 of the figures for a little under $10.  Man, I wish they were just a little bigger, they're neat figures and reasonably priced.  They're just a little short for the rest of my guys.

Thor good

I took my daughters to see THOR on Tuesday evening.  It was pretty good, better than the first THOR, just for the amount of hammering alone.

But here's the thing.   Tuesday night at 5:45 there's not going to be a lot of people in the theatre.   We got there 5 minutes before the show, and were alone.   Then about 2 minutes later this other group of people show up.   With a totally empty theatre, they sit directly behind us.   It's lucky that they weren't obnoxious during the show, but really, what is your damage if you can't let 1 row between you and the only other people in the theatre?  What kind of sick freak are you that you need to crowd up on people when there is all that glorious space?

Complete Madness

I'm just going to say it, I have a pretty awesome collection of 25mm metal miniatures.  They cover almost everything we game with/in/about.  I'm about to go to a convention where I could get more of any sort I might want.

Yet I'm getting this bizarre maddening desire to start buying plastic miniatures.  Either in the large 54mm toy soldier size, or the smaller HO (20mm) size.  For no danged reason.   They wouldn't mix with what I've got.   This sort of soft plastic doesn't paint nearly as well as metal.  Sure, they're cheaper, but I don't really need to go cheaper.  It's just plain madness on my part.  Hopefully it will pass.

Look at this bucket of guys you can get from Toys R Us:

http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=19789896&cp=&parentPage=search

I had already been sorting through sites with the smaller guys.
  

The Tinker's Compulsion

What was kind of neat about Mutants and Muskets for me was that I was completely out of the Tinker Zone, and entirely in the Play Zone.  I'd spend an hour or two tops getting reading for a session and just play, that was the extent of my involvement.  It was a well needed break.  Eventually, I went deep into Tinker mode for the ACKS game. 

Now, I've been in both Play Mode and Tinker mode for the last month with ACKS.   However, I've sort of outstripped the campaign at this point.  When I completed Skull Mountain I got myself to a place that there's little I can do until the players have done a lot more mucking about and have decided they're done there and have another objective.

That leaves my mind dangerously unoccupied.  So, it wanders.   I've been reading and poking around with the early RPG stuff I have, and have been doing some thought experiments (Don't think I'm contemplating another game anytime in the near or even long term future, I'm just keeping the brain busy).

I was wondering what it would be like to do as the old ones did.  Start with a fantasy miniatures campaign with really stripped down rules, but with the general principal--anything can be attempted.  Then just start to add stuff as we went by piling up "rulings" created as they were needed.  Maybe it'd just be a mess.  Maybe we're all too much a product of our RPG experience to come up with something that looked different.   Maybe it'd be awesome.  Maybe preferences would be too at odds to gel things properly.

Again, it's just a product of looking at old things and wondering.

Interesting Idea for Magic Users

The following post on RPG.net has some interesting ideas about magic-users in D&D

MU tweaks

Basically, you can give up the power to cast a spell to make a permanent magic talisman which can cast a spell 3 times per day.   So, a first level mage could give up his single spell slot in exchange for a talisman that could cast 3 sleep spells per day, for example.   The good news is better fire power, the bad news is he loses the ability to change spells for that slot and he risks having the talisman lost or stolen.

The same sort of trade could be made for a "Sanctum" a sort of magic HQ, or a Familiar (of various sorts or powers).

There are more details, of course, but it is really pretty cool.

Chainmail: post melee morale

I've been reading over my printout of my legal PDF copy of the original "Chainmail" miniatures rules (Gygax and Perren, TSR Hobbies, 3rd editon 1975 --original edition was from Guidon games, 1970).   Most of it is pretty straight forward, rules for moving, attack charts, and so forth.  However, there is one rule procedure which is pretty weird and complex, but I can see how it goes a long way toward making the results of a melee more realistic.  After every melee turn, both sides must make a special morale check.  I'll quote the rule:

"POST MELEE MORALE
1. The side with the fewer casualties determines the positive difference between their losses and those suffered by the enemy.  This number is then multiplied by the score of a die roll and the total noted.
2.  The side with the greater number of surviving troops which were involved in the melee determines the positive difference between the number of of his troops and those of the enemy.  This number is noted.
3.  Each side now multiplies their surviving figures, separating them by type of more than one type is involved, by the following "Morale Rating" factors:
Peasants 3                                  Light Horse 6
Light Foot/Levies   4                  Armored Foot, Janissaries  7
Heavy Foot      5                        Medium Horse, Landsknechte  8
Elite Heavy Foot    6                  Heavy Horse, Swiss Pikemen  9
4.  Both sides total the scores arrived at in steps 1-3 above, and the side with the lower total immediately reacts as follows:
0-19 difference--melee continues
20-39 difference--back 1/2 move, good order
40-59 difference--back 1 move, good order
60-79 difference--retreat 1 move
80-99 difference--1-1/2 move rout
100&+ difference--surrender

For melees involving 20 figures per side or less, double all totals."
Chainmail, Gygax and Perren, page 15.

When I first re-read the rules recently, I basically said WTF!!!!
After carefully re-reading it several times, I finally figured it all out.   It's neat how the overall number of troops, the quality of troops, the number inflicted and the number still standing are all factored in to determine who "won" or "lost" the actual fight. 

 This melee morale is also completely different than the "Instability from Excess Casualties" which is more like what we're used to in morale checks (basically rolling over a factor similar to the one given in step 3 above on 2d6 when 1/3 or 1/2 of the unit is defeated).  You can fix the Post Melee Morale by rallying, but you can't fix the Excess Casualties morale, once that breaks the unit is lost.

I kind of think that there must have been a way to avoid all the counting, multiplying and subtracting after each turn of combat and still allowed the various factors to weigh, but also realize that there are fewer actual melee turns in a miniatures battle than in an RPG fight.  

Skull Mountain Design

The Old Workshop has been getting lighter posting lately.  I guess part of that is I'm less involved in theory and long-term rule and setting type work, the kind of work that gets reflected in the workshop, and more on getting things squared away for the game in progress.

It's killing me not to blog more about Skull Mountain, but since the party is actually going through the mountain right now, I can't really discuss what's in it and why it's there.

I suppose I can say that it was obviously inspired by the dungeon-level cross-section "mountain with carved skull face" from the Holmes Basic D&D set from 1977.  The levels don't really correspond to the levels on that map, so there are no spoilers that come from looking at that illustration

Like I said, you will gain nothing from looking for "the Pit" and you should not expect to find a domed city, but the picture was the inspiration.

I can say that I'm very pleased that the party is actually exploring the dungeon.   I've designed 3-4 other old school megadungeons like this in the past, and people have perversely decided to avoid them, or poke their heads in once and wander off.

I tried to make it easy this time, putting it less than a day from a safe location (Wigred's house), and 2 days or so from town.  but then they had to get themselves outlawed. Now there's nowhere to buy anything more expensive than a bag of cheese sandwiches and sailor sausage.

There are a few other features in the neighbourhood of the mountain that the players haven't yet explored, which may be of help for some of their needs, unless they think that Spunky's is the only safe place they need.

I hadn't ever considered the party might decide to move into the dungeon.  I suppose if it worked for Presfen, it would work for them.  Although, Presfen did just get wiped out by a band of particularly persistent "wandering monsters", so perhaps they ought to be on their guard.

I Loved the Chaos Monkeys

The chaos monkeys in practice fulfilled all my design goals.   They proved a useful monster for a wizard to summon up as guards for a place they needed guardians.  They were easy to kill, but their back-jumping strangle power made them just dangerous enough to make for a good battle.

Campaign Goals

I'm looking at some long term campaign goals.

The campaign will reach its completion when one of the following happens:

1) Somebody gets control of the Badlands.   Whether it's Portchester, or the Church, or Dengwurians Resurgent, or the Old Ones or Bastardo, or some PC warlords.  If the region is put under a single authority and kept secure, then the campaign would be complete.

2) The Players max out.  If the players all reach maximum level and establish themselves securely, then the campaign should be complete.

3)  A major power is displaced:  if Portchester, Orchester, the Caturiges, the Dengwurites, or the Old Ones are securely replaced with a new order of some kind, the campaign would be complete.  (Bastardo, the Elf or Dwarf lords, the Savages or the Therks aren't so important, so they wouldn't mark the end of campaign).


Note on "Leaving the Map":  while having a short adventure or two in the wider world is unobjectionable,  I'm thinking that if a PC or PC's leave the entire province of Gatavia on a permanent basis, that's sort of just retiring the character.  The campaign is in Gatavia, and if you leave Gatavia, you're leaving the campaign.

The Tavern

I've put together a first-floor tile for a tavern.
One thing that's troubling me, however, should I draw in the tables, or just use some of our wooden blocks or spools when we need them?

Urban Tiles

The 25 or so  tiles I'm using for dungeons seem adequate for a large variety of dungeon levels.  I could probably use a few more "cave" tiles, beyond the dozen I have.  

I do need some urban tiles, however.   Since a townhouse in ACKS is said to be 30 foot square, I could actually fit four such houses on a single 12"x12" tile.   I imagine I'd need 6 such tiles at the very least to model a street scene.    I'm afraid that I might need a metric crapload of them to really do a city right.   I'll have to start poking around a bit.

I also need to do a standard ACKS keep, which is 60x60 feet--or exactly 1 tile.  I need to see how many floors I'd need. 

Current Putterings

If the "Skull Collectors" do indeed follow the Brother Punchy Plan, that gives me some clear direction in my preparations.  I actually need to re-stock level 1 of Skull Mountain.  I don't know when the last time it was I actually had to (or got to) restock a level.   I just need to figure how Presfen will react to the loss of his brigand allies, and what he might do (and what he is able to do) to make his base secure, with them being gone. 

Also, I do have the area around Skull Mountain sketched out, but I need some more details for various locations.  There are some places of moderate safety and possible interest that would be worth scouting out.  I just need to make some up-close ground tiles and the like.

Good stuff all around.

Stuffed with Treasure, Crammed with Death

Skull Mountain is all ready for your first visit

(guest-artist rendering)

Skull Mountain

I drew up the cross-section for this "Skull Mountain" dungeon and got to fiddling with it.  I got the first level done, but realized that you could very easily find yourself in level 1a, pretty quickly, so I plunged on and got that done.

Then, the more and more I thought about it, the more and more I realized that with a few overly aggressive moves and a little bad luck, you guys could end up in level 2, 3a, 3b, 4 or even 5b very, very quickly.  Yikes.

Right now, I've just finished up to level 4.  So, I might even finish the whole thing by Sunday (that's level 5a and 5b, and level 6 to go, and I probably should finish the nearby tower too, in case you decide for some reason that the inhabitants must die).

One thing I'm kind of feeling stupid about, I've been writing "Shoot" when I meant "Chute" all over the place.

Recharging Wands

The ACKS book doesn't really say much about recharging wands, but I've always thought that recharging wands should be something you can do.

I thought that perhaps we could say that anyone who can make a scroll, can recharge a wand, and that a charge in a wand would cost the same amount of time and money that making an equivalent level scroll would cost.

I also think that a Magical Research roll would be necessary to determine how many charges the wand could handle and how many it currently has.

Identifying Magic Items

Potions:  Alchemy proficiency identifies one on 11+;  Gnomish "nose for potions" also identifies one on an 11+.

Scrolls:  all you have to do is read the language they were written in

Common Items:  ordinary features of a magic item (it's a ring of protection +1, or a shield +2) can be identified using Magical Engineering Proficiency.

Unique or Historical Items:  the Lore Mastery Proficiency or the Bard's equivalent power will identify unique powers of an item of historical note on an 18+, with a +1 bonus per level.

All Items, All Powers:  can be identified by magical research.  This takes 2 weeks and 1000gp.  The researcher must also make a magical research roll, based on level (see p117 core book).

Example:  The Golden Shield of Mad Gerald is a +2 shield that also has the power to reflect spell attacks from demons.   A Magical Research roll would reveal all those facts.   A magical engineering roll would only reveal that it acts as a +2 shield.   A Lore Mastery roll would reveal the name of the object and the demon-reflection power, but not the +2 effect.

Playing at the World

I've just started reading Playing at the World by Jon Peterson.  It's really a history of the invention of Dungeons and Dragons, and an investigation of the sources of various elements of the original version of the game.  So far, I've been reading about the creation of the wargaming hobby and its fandom in the 1960's.   It's really quite fascinating.   I'm surprised at how important Gary Gygax was before the creation of D&D.  He was a war-gaming machine and was a social-network machine.   He did so much to link people together and get a real connection to come together from disparate people,

It is also fascinating how important the "Opponents Wanted" column in Avalon Hill's "General" magazine was in accidentally bring clubs into existence, and how jerks advertising fake organizations led to the creation of a real organization that led eventually to Gary running the first GenCon.  

It's a very interesting book so far (although a little pricey for a paper-bound book, big though it is.)   I'd be willing to loan it out to anyone who wants to read it whenever I'm finished with it, although that might be a little while, since I kind of want to read it at a slow pace and enjoy it a while.

Soapworks Dungeon

Soon I'll introduce you properly to SKULL MOUNTAIN, which is a pre-planned multi-level dungeon, designed for multiple visits for multiple reasons.  However, we started this week looking into the dungeon under the abandoned Ardean soap works, just outside of the city of Portchester.

I noted down the map tiles you guys saw last time and have decided to make the Soap Works into a semi-official Smirkenburg dungeon.   At any time, you can return to the Soap Works, and poke around to your heart's content.  It won't provide any campaign changing magic treasures or clues to mysteries, or complicated plots or even make much sense.  Instead as you progress tile to tile, I'll just randomly add tiles and use some random charts to determine when there's a trap or treasure.  The monsters and treasures will come from the old 'Monster and Treasure Assortment'. 

So, if any session you just want to do a quick dungeon dive to get some quick cash, and don't have any particular other agenda, you can always just jump into the Soap Works.   If your PC's are busy with magic research or healing themselves, you could even send henchmen on a hench-mission into the Soap Works.   If you don't like the main adventure, you can quit and go to the Soap Works.

Advice for Wizards

The wizards last game were doing a lot of nothing, and that's tempting for a low level wizard to do.   My suggestion is that Robert and Marlon have a good long look at the Gear Book.  There are a lot of interesting tools, alchemical substances and so forth that might give the mages some more options.  Oil of course, can be used for fiery death and to make things slippery, there are all kinds of noise-makers that might have their uses.  Look around and come up with schemes and plans.  Wizards are the smart ones, act like it.

The Main Guy

Guy #2:  I was looking to try a thief, and he had the makings of an excellent one.

I dropped his wisdom from 16 to 10 and increased his Dexterity from 15 to 18.  He has a good CON and a good Charisma, both excellent features.

Proficiencies are pretty important.  Because he has a low INT (8) he can't read, so I spend his general proficiency on Language so he can read and write.   More importantly, since thieves have sucky hit points, I want him to be useful with missiles, so I choose Precise Shooting, letting him shoot into melee.

So, meet The Masked Archer of the Apocalypse
human, thief, neutral, level 3 (thieves go up fast, 3000xp)
St 9 (+0), Int 8 (-1), Wis 10 (0), Dex 18 (+3), Con 15 (+1), Cha 13 (+1)

Proficiencies: Language (literacy), Precise Shooting
Thief Skills: Open Locks 16, Traps 16, Pick Pocket 15, Move Silently 15, Climb Walls 5, Hide in Shadows 17, Hear Noise 12.  Backstab x2

Saves: paralysis 12, Poison 12, Blast 15, Wand 13, Spell 14

Missile Attack:  6+,  Melee Attack  9+

AC:  5  (leather 2, +3 dex)
Hit points: 13

Gear: leather armor, long bow, large quiver with 40 arrows, sword, dagger
baldric, sword scabbard, dagger scabbard, belt pouch
Back pack, thieves' tools, 6 torches, tinderbox
tunic and pants (good), mask, hooded cloak, high leather boots
1 dose of white lotus

Encumbrance:   4 stone 2 items:  not encumbered:  move 120'/40'

3 gold and 5sp remaining

My Turn for a character

I realized that I should roll characters too, since there are some potential Judges on deck.   So, here it goes:

The Rolls:

Guy 1:  St 15, In 7, Wi 10, De 12, Co 5, Cha 14

Guy 2: St 9, In 8, Wi 16, Dex 15, Co 15, Cha 13

Guy 3: St 12,  In 12, Wi 12, De 9, Con 14, Cha 7

Guy 4:  St 8, In 12, Wi 5, De 13, Co 13, Ch 6

Guy 5:  St 10, In 4, Wi 8,  De 10, Con 10, Cha 12

The Dumped:

Guy 1:  since he has a Con of 5 (-2 hit points per level) he's toast, meet Brutus the Lackey for the henchman deck

Guy 5:  since he has no score at all above 12, and no way to increase any of them, he's toast too.  Meet Bluto the Lackey for the henchman deck.

The Back-ups

Guy 3: looks like an adequate fighter, mage or cleric.  Especially with the CON of 14, definitely a keeper.   I drop his Wisdom down to 10 and raise his Strength to 13 and make him a Gnome Titan.  He gets +1 to hit/damage, +1 hit point per level and 5% exp bonus, and only -1 to reactions and henchman total.  Definitely playable.   Meet Beornwin the Stomper.

Beornwin the Stomper, Gnome Titan,  neutral
St 13 (+1),  Int 12 (0), Wis 10 (0), Dex 9 (0), Con 14 (+1), Cha 6 (-1)
Class Powers: nose for potions, infravision, groin stomp, fight as team
Proficiencies:  Combat Trickery (knockdown), Endurance

Guy 4:  Drop his Con from 15 to 13 (no change in bonus), raise his Int from 12 to 13 and make him a Mage.  Charisma and Wisdom are both weak, and Intelligence is only just passable for a mage, but having Dex and Con at 13 should help him survive combat a bit better.  Meet Gaius the Unexpected.

Gaius the Unexpected, human, mage, neutral
St 8 (-1), Int 13 (+1), Wis 5 (-2), Dex 13 (+1), Con 13 (+1), Cha 6 (-1)
Spell Repertoire (level 1): Magic Missile, Silent Step
Proficiencies:  Collegiate Wizardry (Mulfando), Alchemy, Magical Engineering

The main guy: see next post.

First Session of ACKS, thoughts

     Despite the fact that you have to roll 3d6 in order, the character generation gives some entirely acceptable results.  Roll 5 guys, chuck 2, and keep 2 as backups gets rid of the total losers.
      The "reduce on score by 2, and raise a Prime by 1" system makes it really easy to get a fighter with an 18 strength or a thief with an 18 Dex.   I don't know about the thieves, but fighters with 18 strength really kick ass.   Sigbrand and Murderface really tore through the goblins and kobolds like tissue paper.
      The large number of class choices, and the Proficiencies slow down character generation.   I imagine later in the process when we're all more familiar with everything, it will get faster, but 5 people making 5 characters at once made for slow moving.
     Because we spent less time on play testing than I'd planned, it was nice we got a whole short adventure in.   The old Basic D&D Monster/Treasure assortments worked just fine for ACKS with little modification.
     I wish I had dumped the Lizardmen, I just don't see how they're going to be any good in actual play.  Everyone in town is just going to scream "Ahh, Lizardmen!"  

Coming Up with a List

I'm coming up with a list of things for our test session next week to show how the system works in practice.

I've come up with the following:

1) Stealth Demonstration:   show what the difference in the various stealth effects are between A thief, barbarian and explorer (and a "guy with high dex).

2) Combat Special Effects:  showing how Charge and Cleave work (especially) and the other specials like overrun, knockdown etc.

3) Spell Repertoire:  showing how mages of different INT have different Repertoire and how that is effective.

4)  Dungeon Exploration:  the searching, dungeon movement, traps and so forth

5) Wilderness Exploration: how overland encounters work and the benefits of having an explorer.

Are there other features anyone would like to get playtest focus on before making characters?

Mutants and Muskets post mortem

I had a basic system of my own about 1/3 finished for Mutants and Muskets when you guys talked me into Savage Worlds.   The switch in systems caused a lot of change in how the campaign played out.   First of all, the game got a lot more over the top.  When we had mutant powers and weird science, it made the whole setting much more gonzo and much less gritty than I had first imagined.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, almost every campaign I've ever done has been gritty in imagination, but goofy in practice.  Just as the characters were goofy, I enjoyed cooking up weird, goofy mutants of all sorts.   The original scheme would have seen mostly mutant cannibals, rabid dogs and a few mutant animals that weren't outrageous.  That would have been fine for fiction, but weird mutants were much more fun.

The characters also were a lot more broken than they could ever have been in my system.  I ended having to replace the standard ape-men with tough ape-men, and had to give most enemies 11+ on toughness just to make it worth putting them on the table.   I suspect that some people weren't cyphering correctly, but I decided not to care. 

I probably shouldn't have set the armor ratings so high for the breastplates.   I let myself be led by the desire to have gradually improving equipment, rather than keeping the danger level under control.   Having so many guys with 12-13 toughness just fed into the arms race.

I do know that Marlon's character made it impossible to have any adventure with a heavy role-playing component.  He would just say "roll persuasion" or whatever and add 8 to his dice and win.  Yeah, that's a big incentive for me to put in a lot of role-playing encounters.

Savage World's flaws always leak out in the end.  You have broken, one-note characters and battles turn on a randomly occurring humongous damage roll.

I really enjoyed the overland exploration and the encounter system I used.  And then after a while, I had had enough.   Luckily you guys had the truck at that point so I just tried to pressure you into taking the truck everywhere.  That wasn't my plan, but it came as a relief.  

I especially enjoyed the two set-piece battles in Scarptown.   Just having a miniatures battle every once in a while is just plain cool.  Since old school D&D and Savage Worlds were both developed from miniatures battle systems, we've been able to do them now and again.

The Bat-cave dungeon and the Crab People dungeon were both excellent crawls.  I also learned enough about the 12" square geomorph scheme to be confident enough to rely on it for ACKS.   The railroady  Speed-boat/hurricane opening of the crab people dungeon was pretty darn cool too.

I couldn't have dreamed up anything better than Nut-Spanky in my wildest pre-planning fevered dreams.  The fact that he shot down Jock in his junk 3 times in 3 separate sessions was just freaking amazing.

Chaotic Characters

I've had one or two people ask about playing Chaotic characters in the upcoming campaign.

I'm really of two minds on the subject.  One side of me thinks "Why on Earth would anyone want to play the bad guys."  With another voice chiming in, "the adventure designs suddenly get a lot more complicated."

The other side says "whatever they want to play is what they should play."  I've only really played an evil guy once and it was pretty much over the top and amazing, but you burn out on it quick and leave a garlicky corpse. 

What's the motivation for wanting to play Chaotics?  I want to understand what people want in that regard before making up my mind.

Skull Mountain: One level done

I've gotten the first level of the Skull Mountain Complex done.   I think I've learned a few lessons about a multi-level dungeon for practical play.   It's within one day's travel of civilization, so it doesn't require a base-camp or multi-day trek to get there or back.   There are several reasons to go there, and the first visit (only) is on the proverbial rail-road. 

I'm hoping the subsequent levels will pull together quickly since they won't be so "lair of a group" like the first level is, so I won't have to figure out what the bad guys are using each room for.  I'll just have a theme and go with it for the others, with some outposts and mini-lairs.

Dungeon Robber

Dungeon Robber is a simple online, text-based game of dungeon exploring.  It uses a modified version of the 1eDMG random map generator to get you wander around the dungeon and make encounters.   It's entertaining, but incredibly brutal.  Even if you are very cautious and constantly flee to the surface for rest, you can just get randomly killed by traps.   Anyway, I've been playing it off and on lately, and if you want to take a look:

http://blogofholding.com/dungeonrobber/

Sneak Preview: Behold Skull Hill

Traps in ACKS

One interesting thing about dungeon traps in ACKS is that they only activate on a 1-2 on a d6.  This is actually an artifact rule from Basic/Expert D&D and originally from the very first OD&D rule set (but not from AD&D as best as I can remember).

This rule makes the crappy percentage of thieves to find and remove traps at low levels make a whole lot more sense.  If they only go off 1/3 of the time anyway, the F/R Traps ability is more like a bonus saving throw that Thieves get against traps.

Vacation Reading 2: Capsule Reviews

The Age of Odin:
An English ex-soldier, modern day,  gets swept up in Ragnarok.  Hero is a bit of a jerk.  There's no real explanation of why he's so capable and everyone else isn't.  Meh.

Ghost Stories of the Delaware Coast
Poop stories of the Poop coast

Tales of the Mountain Men
Only got through a couple of chapters, there's only so much authentic frontier gibberish one can take.

Castle Old Skull
Awesome e-book, guide to designing an old-school megadungeon.  Crammed full of suggestions on room types, atmosphere, planning suggestions, setting integration etc.  Really a good read.

Quag Keep by Andre Norton
First D&D novel ever written, 1978,  I had read it before, I think I liked it a little better this time, but it was overall pretty lame.  It had the old "players sucked into the game" jazz.  But what was more grievous was that it was over half way through the book before they got into a proper fight.

Donovan's Brain
Written in 1942, I bought a reprint from 1969.  Amoral scientist preserves the brain of a business tycoon killed in a plane crash.  Keeps brain in a jar with nutrients.  Learns to communicate with brain telepathically, but it's EVIL and starts to take control.  Despite the totally cheesy premise, this book was surprisingly really, really good.  The unfolding mystery of Donovan's plan and the story of his life gradually unrolling was very well done.

The Lazy DM
e-book advise on cutting down prep time.   Far too new school for me.  Focuses on aspects of the game that I just don't care about.

Everything I needed to know I learned in Kindergarten (the POSTER)
Whoever the fiend was who decorated this apartment, hung a poster summarizing "Everything I needed to know I learned in Kindergarten" but they hung it right behind the toilet, so I had to read the damned thing every time I took a pee.   What horrible cruelty!  What unbelievable evil!  By the end of the week I'm just muttering "Shut-up Martin" over and over again.

Vacation Reading

One  of the things I took along on vacation to read, was the first 50 issues of Dragon Magazine from the CD-ROM archive I got a few years ago (a decade? Who knows?)  It was fun figuring out where I joined in the fun   (somewhere in 77-78, when I was in 7th grade, I had the first edition of the first version of Basic D&D--the one with the Blue Cover edited by Eric Holmes),  It looks like AD&D first edition was not out yet, although the Monster Manual was soon on the way.  So, if I had actually met anyone who was playing at the time, and they weren't playing basic, they would have been playing Original D&D, in the three soft-back brown booklets.

I was actually familiar with many of the articles I came across in the Dragon.  The 'Best of the Dragon volume 1" was something I got when I was still in high school, and was a huge influence on how I DMed.  It was really cool looking at many of those articles again.

One very interesting thing was just how thin-skinned Gary Gygax was.   There was one editorial he wrote, absolutely furious with plagiarists (quite rightly so).  But then he goes on a huge tear about Amateur Press Association publications.  These things (APA's), were set-ups where any old jerk would write an article, a story. or whatever, then send it to a particular APA and pay a fee.  The coordinator would compile all the articles together, get them printed, send one copy to everyone who had submitted and also would sell copies to interested readers.   There were several APA's that published Role-playing materials back then.  APA's in general, I believe, have been more or less made redundant by the Internet, although I believe that one of them from the old days still exists "Alarums and Excursions", and one could argue that "Fight On!" magazine, which publishes new "Old School" material through PDF and Print-On-Demand is more or less an APA. 

Anyway,  Gary spewed forth an unremitting stream of bile against APA's in this editorial.  He basically called anyone who published anything in any of them a wanna-be, a loser, a vainglorious puss who couldn't get published for real.   It was really pretty strong,   I suppose it's good that Gary was in the wilderness when the Internet came to town.   My gosh, they just let anyone say anything on that thing.

I guess I knew Gary was a bit thing skinned.   My only contact with him was on an internet message board, where I posted something about not liking how D&D 3rd edition handled Spears.   I know old Gygax was a big spear and polearm guy (several articles by him in early Dragons), but he basically tore me a new one.  I was surprised, since he didn't have anything to do with D&D 3rd edition, and I hadn't directed the comment in any way toward him.   I knew he occasionally posted on that board, but wasn't expecting he'd notice.

Card Project

I decided to go forward with my combat card project. It's a lot of work upfront, but really pays off in-game and in making adventures.

I just decided to go through the ACKS random dungeon monster encounters and card them up.

Most monsters are pretty easy, except for the various Humanoids.  For each humanoid entry, there's a Normal, Champion, Sub-Chief, Chief, Shaman, and Witchdoctor to do.   You've got to look up a bunch of stuff and recalculate XP for all the non-normal types.   But, since they're concentrated on the lower levels, I think I've gotten through most of them by now.

NPC parties are another nut to crack.   One problem is spell repertoire,  it's actually harder to set up than AD&D, since casters can cast any spell from their repertoire spontaneously.  The other problem is Magic Items, each NPC has a 5% chance per category (potion, scroll, sword, etc) to have an item.   If I'm just going to have 1 generic NPC per level, then we'd be running into the same magic items repeatedly, if I just say "roll when you use him" than the stats on the combat card my be wrong.  I'm sure I'll come up with some solution.

New Cards

I've been experimenting with some stat cards for ACKS.   Hand-written seems to be the way to go for these, since I can do them anywhere and I don't have to get involved in the whole moving stuff from one format to another when I move them from one computer to another (long story).  

So, above are 4 examples of different types of goblins:  I put the AC, Damage, Attack Number and Movement Rate at each of the 4 corners, since those are the quick combat referenced, and the other stuff is filled in between.

I'll have to see how more complicated creatures work out, but I like these so far.  

Experience and Treasure

I've mentioned this question before, but now we are about a month and a half away from actually starting ACKS, I do want to bring it up again, and perhaps get some serious feedback.

In the ACKS rules as written, if the party seizes 10,000 gp in treasure, and there are 5 PCs and 10 henchmen (a not unrealistic scenario).  Regardless of how the treasure is actually split up, the PC's will each get 1000 XP from "treasure share", and each henchman will get  500 XP.

Now the actual treasure split, by the book, should be: 230gp for each henchman (15 shares each), and 1,539gp for each PC (100 shares each).

My instinct is that it would be far clearer to do things this way:

The PC's split the cash evenly.   Each PC awards his own henchmen cash out of his share as he wishes (but if the PC takes more than 6-7 times the amount of any henchman, that henchman will consider himself ill-used).  Sometime a PC might get a larger share of the total pot if he doesn't get a good magic item.  Sometimes a PC might steal or hide treasure and end up with a larger total.  And here's the important bit:  the PC's and henchmen get XP  based on the amount of gold they actually take home for themselves, not as a share of the theoretical pot.

How do people actually feel about this?

Gatavia III wiki, crammed with goodness

Andrew has set up the campaign wiki for the Gatavia III campaign.  I've shut down the Temporary Gatavia page and moved everything (and more) onto the wiki site.

Gatavia III wiki

I've added a couple of new classes, and put the setting book and some of the maps in wiki form for online reference.  There is new information scattered through there, plus the beginning of a lot of NPC information.

Look especially at the document page, it has a ton of the game information which won't appear in wiki (for example the Gear Book), since the wiki doesn't like tables.

Mythic GM emulator

I sort of gave this thing a try while planning out the "Redline to Carson City" adventure for this Sunday.   It wasn't all that useful as a GM planning tool, it kind of boiled down to "keep flipping a coin."   My questions were pretty simple, like "Do they get across New Mexico?  I could see the use if you had a bunch of people and no GM and people had a wider range of questions which had a wider range of probabilities than I was using.  If you were asking "does the washerwoman have the key of Gargamel?"  and "did the gatekeeper leave the halberd behind?" it would make using the system more interesting.

One More

I've added one last document:  the Book of Magic and Monsters, which has all the custom Monsters and Magic Spells I've made for the game, as well as the Magical Orders that characters can join.

Gatavia III temporary page

That should be the last of the background and rules booklets for now.  I think I've gone through all my ACKS experiments in creating things, and all my campaign information from the past 2 campaigns.  What's there should cover things. 

The only other thing I can think of is guides to the cities of Portchester and Orchester.  Damn.  Now I've thought of it.  Well, I suppose that stuff isn't really player information, so I needn't publish it.
 

More Material for Gatavia III campaign

I've posted three more documents for the ACKS Gatavia campaign, at the temporary Gatavia page:

Gatavia III temporary page

These include:

Setting Reference:  a general background document, describing History, Peoples, Languages and Religions of the Game World.

Quick Guide to Gatavia:  2 maps and description of the regions in the province of Gatavia where the campaign will be set.

Map Booklet:  province, regional, and world map for the campaign.

Most of this stuff is edited together from material from the last two Gatavia campaigns, but there are some changes and additions to make it match up with ACKS and campaign developments. 

World Map Key`

Here is the key to the numbered locations:

1—Jotunheim: land of giants and frost

2—Drakkhar: Northron kingdom, original home of Northrons

3—Trollheim: fallen Northron kingdom, land of trolls

4—Frost Island: isolated island, scouted by Northron sailors.

5—Drell: Bare, rocky kindgom of the Neanderthals

6—The Great Eastern Plains: home of countless Easterling Nomads

7—Aster: Westerling Island, heart of the Druid cult on earth, original homeland of Westerlings

8—Ulban: Westerling Island, once an Ardean province, now battleground between Westerling natives and Northron Invaders

9—The Haunted Islands: a series of mysterious islands filled with danger, magic and treasure?

10—Seamark: a kingdom of sea-faring Northrons.

11—Rucconia: a heavily forested kingdom of Easterlings who have given up nomadism.

12—Hallia: originally a Westerling region, but conquered by Ardeans centuries ago. Now it is a shattered, disordered land of independent provinces and regions. The Old Ones have several city-states across the land.

13—Gautland: confederation of forest-dwelling Northron tribes.

14—Ost-Gaut: second confederation of forest and mountain Northron tribes.

15—Bastarnae: series of petty chiefdoms of a mixed Northron-Easterling tribes

16—Hiron: remote and misty magical island, Westerling and Elvish population.

17—Vesperos: once an Ardean province, now a weak kingdom ruled by a Northron dynasty. Nobility are of Northron descent, but Ardean is the language of all population.

18—Aetia: once a key Ardean mainland province, now an independent Ardean kingdom.

19—Roricon: mountainous collection of petty fiefdoms and towns, Ardean in language and culture.

20—Provere: once the eastern frontier of the Ardean Empire, now the king of this domain claims to be the Ardean Emperor, a claim occasionally honored by other Ardean regions, but mostly ignored.

21—The Great Easterling Kingdom: most ancient civilized realm on earth,wealthy and decadent.

22—Lipon: independent island kingdom of Easterlings, known for warlike isolationism.

23—Hydaspes: rival Easterling kingdom known for seafaring

24—Ardean Islands: once heart of Ardean Empire, now a series if independent island duchies, one of which is an Old Ones city state, another is the home of the Lawful Patriarch of the West.

25—Gendis: a mixed Westerling-Southron kingdom that has become an extreme Lawful religious state since the fall of the Ardean empire.

26- Rudrun: ancient Southron kingdom, now has a mixed Southron and Ardean and Old Ones population divided into a host of duchies engaged in constant bloody war.

27—Desh: original home of the Zaharan people, now divided into a series of small emirates, several of which are in the hands of the Old Ones.

28—The Zahara Desert: a vast desert full of mystery and death.

29—Ur-mutoz: an Easterling colony across the sea. The coastal cities are still in Easterling hands, but the Old Ones and Orcs have seized the inland regions.

30—Island of Shebar: mysterious Southron Kingdom of great wealth and legend.

31—Southern Jungle: filled with savage Southron tribes, lizardmen and who knows what else.

32—The Kingdom of the South: original homeland of the Southrons, an ancient and legendary land.

World Map

I had a vague, sketchy world map for the world Gatavia is in, during the Return of the Trolls campaign.  I had another rough map of the NW corner of the world during the Badlands game, that didn't match the original map, but did map the "mapping conventions" of province equalling 200x200 miles.

I've finally got a schematic (not artistic) world map put together that covers the whole world, uses the mapping conventions, and includes all the places of the other two maps, plus "Lipon" from Andrew's Lipponese character.   Here goes:

More ACKS/Gatavia Material Ready

Check out the following page:

Gatavia Temporary Page

The following things are posted there:

Gatavia Gear Book (as mentioned earlier)

NEW:  BOOK OF CUSTOM CLASSES:   this contains the following 9 custom classes made by me for the campaign;  Gnome Titan, Halfling Burglar, Halfling Pumpkin Queen, Halfling Scout, Lackey, Nobiran Dragon-Slayer, Orkin Bandit, Orkin Hexmaster, and Orkin Thug. 

NEW:  SUMMARY OF CLASSES SHEET:  a two-page PDF that summarizes all of the classes available from the ACKS main book, the Player's Companion and the Book of Custom Classes.  Man, there are a metric ton of classes to choose from.

Alak! I've just had an idea

I've gotten a good collection of 12"x12" dungeon tiles, and a smaller batch of cave tiles.   Now it just hit me, I should have some urban tiles too, with various buildings etc.   I suppose I'd have to put a 1" clear space all around the edge, to represent the street.  Although some might only have street on 1-2 sides, to be sure.   Hmmm, I'll have to play around with this.   Suddenly 150 tiles is starting to look like it may eventually not be enough.

Now it's positively done

I finished the Gear Book, and have committed to the final version. So far as to say, I took it to Office Max and had three copies printed out for use at the table.

If you want the pdf right now, click on this link (to a temporary page I've added onto the Mutants wiki) to have a look:

Gatavia temporary page

I think it's done

I think I'm done with the Gear Book.

The last touches were the Poisons, which I finally decided to include,  a series of Alchemical items I found in a magazine and thought were fun (pickled orc eyes etc), and Special Beverages (some from a magazine, some from Hackmaster).

I'll look over it again a few times before I post it somewhere.   I have to decide whether I'm going to put in a contents page or index now, or wait until I print it out and add it to the end.  I'd like to take it to Office Max or something to print it out, since I'd rather have it be two-sided, since it's 30 pages, and I want to make 2-3 copies for the table.   It's so much easier making a contents page or index from a printed copy that trying to constantly jumping back and forth on screen.

I think I've gotten everything we'll need for quick reference.  It seems to have everything, more or less, from the Badlands book, plus a few things more.

Mythic GM emulator

Bought a new product yesterday,  a PDF from Drive Thru RPG, called the Mythic GM emulator.  It's a 50-page rulebook that produces a system where a party can play and adventure without a GM.  It would also work for a GM without a prepared adventure, or for solo play.

Basically, it has a mechanism where the players ask yes or no questions and refer to a chart with dice rolls to see whether it's yes, no, exciting yes, or exciting no, based on their idea of a reasonable probability and a randomness factor based on how well or ordered or poorly/wildly it's been going.

I'll keep reading away at it, and maybe try a solo game this week.  If it's up to snuff, maybe we'll try it sometime. 

Here's a link to the publisher's description:

GM EMULATOR

ACKS Gear Book under way

The urge to do an ACKS version of a Gear Book.  I got the combat equipment done last night, and have worked up most of the everyday equipment this morning.  

It might be helpful to have, especially since much of the equipment stats are scattered about the ACKS book.    Most things are converting pretty easily from the Badlands book, although I had to re-configure all the encumbrance stuff to match the ACKS   items/stone system (which I do like).  Books and paper a lot cheaper in ACKS than in AD&D. 

I'm debating whether to put the poison section in the gear book or not.  It'll probably be o.k. to do so, since most of the poisons are slow acting and I don't see people getting really into using them all the time. 

A bit worried by ACKS initiative

I'm a bit worried about the ACKS initiative system.

The way it works is that every turn you roll initiative for every adventurer, every single monster and/or group of identical monsters.  It's 1d6+Dex Bonus+Class Bonus.  Then, you count down from highest number to lowest.

WHY IT'S WORRISOME
It seems to me that it could be quite a chore, especially since Henchmen would have to be rolled separately from PC's.   You would have to keep some note of it and perhaps keep it visible.   Individual Initiative each round works well in Savage Worlds, since the cards are clearly visible.   Individual rolled initiative works in 3.0, because you don't re-roll every turn, you just keep cycling.  This system doesn't have either virtue.  Rolled initiative every time works in AD&D 1e, because you roll for the entire side/team and not for each individual.  The ACKS system takes the slowest clunkiest feature of each of these other initiative systems without their corresponding benefits.

WHY IT ISN'T EASY TO CHANGE:
The problem is that certain classes get initiative bonuses as one of their class powers, and if you change the rules, you've nerfed an advantage of those classes.  More importantly, the individual rolled initiative is tied up with the rules for spell casting, interrupting spell casting, and the mechanism for withdrawing from combat.  If you change the baseline rules, you wreck havoc across these other rules as well.  You also spoil some of the Proficiencies.

Review: Three Hearts and Three Lions (Poul Anderson)

Following Bob's suggestion, I took daughter #2 and her friend down to the York Emporium on Wednesday.   While they didn't find anything they wanted, I picked up a copy of Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions.  I had a paper back copy of this book back in high school, but hadn't read it in many decades.

It's the story about a Danish man (who had spent some years in America) in the middle of a fight with the Nazis finds himself transported to an alternate world which is much like the world of the Carolingian and Arthurian romances of the middle ages.  It's framing device is almost the same as Edgar Rice Burrough's Princess of Mars. 

As he travels around with a dwarf, swan-may and eventually a Saracen, he slowly realizes that he is a famous hero of that world (whose shield design is the titled three hearts and three lions).   He has to overcome various monsters such as an elf-knight, dragon, giant, were-wolf and the blandishments of Morgan LaFey. 

First thing that's notable is just how short it is; only about 190 pages.  Still, there are some really interesting things in it for the D&D gamer.   First of all the Troll he fights is without any doubt the origin of the D&D troll.  Not only does it regenerate all damage, sticking on chopped off limbs, and can only be killed when the bits are dropped in the fire, but the description of its face, with its long nose and eyes like black pools are exactly like D&D trolls.

Secondly, it's description of the two forces "Law" and "Chaos" with various unaligned individuals, is the basic framework of the original D&D alignment system.

Thirdly, the hero is clearly the inspiration for the D&D paladin.  His alternate identity is Holger Danske, a.k.a., Ogier the Dane.  Who in medieval romance was one of Charlemagne's Paladins or chief knights.   In the book, Holger has similar protections from evil like a D&D paladin, and even "Lays on Hands" at one point.   While this is a common feature of Christian miracle healing, associating it with a paladin begins here I think.  When Gary wanted a "super fighter" to beef up fighters in relation to magic-users, I think he went to this book for his inspiration for a Champion of Law.

There is also a wizard in the book who has an "unseen servant" tidy up for him.

It does have elves and dwarves, but they are nothing like D&D elves and dwarves.   The elves are evil and can't touch iron.  The dwarves are good guys, but they really can't fight--as they are small dudes.   I wonder if Anderson wasn't reacting to Tolkein in some way.   The way Holger defeats the giant is strikingly reminiscent of Bilbo and the Trolls and Bilbo's riddle contest with Gollum in The Hobbit, but with a sort of modernistic, snarky twist.  I don't know for sure whether he had The Hobbit in mind, or it's a question of using the same sources.

I'm not the first to point out any of this, but it was really striking while re-reading it again. 

OD&D

I swore I'd never be a "Collector".   I don't buy things just to have them.  I buy toys that I'm going to play with.   Nevertheless, I'm sorely tempted to pre-order the Original D&D Premium reprint set.   It has the original version of the game from 1974, plus the original supplements: Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry, Gods, Demi-gods and Heroes and (I think) Swords and Spells.  They're all in a wooden box with a set of dice.

I've had PDF's of all of these volumes for years now, so I don't really need the material.   I probably would never actually play the game.   If you use all the supplements, it is so close to being AD&D 1e that it doesn't make a serious difference, and if you want to stick to the basic "3 Brown Books", I have several retro-clones that clean it up a bit.  So, it would be a case of buying it to have it. 

The chief enticement is the fact that while the list price is $146,  Amazon is offering a pre-order for around $85.   I've wasted more money on stupider stuff than that in my life.   I'd probably never spend the $146 on it, but the $85 falls just at the outer edge of my stupid zone.

Two Summoning Spells

Call Chaos Monkeys

Arcane 1 Range: 120' Duration: 1 turn per level

This spell allows the caster to summon forth 2 Chaos Monkeys for each level of experience he possesses. The monkeys will instantly appear within 120 feet of the caster and will zealously serve him for 1 turn per level of the caster, or until killed or dispelled. The monkeys have no language, but will understand the following command words: kill, stay, follow, open, carry, and quiet. They will also understand pointing by their master. So, he can point to a foe and say “kill” and the monkey will attack the foe pointed toward. If summoned near the caster's enemies, the monkeys will automatically attack without need for further command.

Conjure Monkey Minions

Arcane 2 Range: 10' Duration: Permanent

This spell allows the caster to summon forth 2 Chaos Monkeys for each level of experience he possesses. The monkeys will instantly appear within 10 feet of the caster and will zealously serve him permanently, until killed or dispelled. The monkeys have no language, but will understand the following command words: kill, stay, follow, open, carry, and quiet. They will also understand pointing by their master. So, he can point to a foe and say “kill” and the monkey will attack the foe pointed toward.

CHAOS MONKEYS

CHAOS MONKEYS

% In Lair	30%
Dungeon Enc.	Pack 2d6, Lair 5d6
Wilderness Enc.	Crowd 5d6, Lair 5d6
Alignment	Chaotic
Movement	120' (40')
Armor Class	3
Hit Dice	1d4 hit points*
Attacks	1
Damage	1d4
Save	F0
Morale	0
Treasure Type	none
XP	6

Theses beasts can be summoned from the Abyss by magicians using one of several spells. One such spell, Conjure Monkey Minions, permanently summons the creatures into the world, where they occasionally outlive their summoner and take up a life in the wild, reproducing and spreading their mischief. They appear to be small to medium sized monkeys, but with long, muscular hands and sickly green-glowing eyes. They possess infravision to 90 feet, and are naturally stealthy, imposing a -1 to the surprise rolls of their enemies. If they surprise their enemies, they sneak around to the back of their enemies and strike with a +4 to hit, and if they score a hit they have mounted their victim's back and have wrapped their hands around his throat. The throttling attack scores 1d4 points of damage immediately and the monkey will maintain the hold, scoring 1d4 points per round, until it or the victim is dead. A victim being choked by a Chaos Monkey cannot cast spells, nor can it attack the monkey himself. The only action he can take is to try to break free, by using his round to attempt a saving throw versus paralysis.

If they monkeys do not have surprise, they can attempt to leap behind their target on a proficiency roll of 15+ to make a throttling backstab. If 6 or more chaos monkeys attack a single non-surprised victim, one is assumed to be behind the victim and can attempt a throttling back-stab. No more than one chaos monkey can have a successful throttling hold on any individual at one time.