Thranconia Revival

I've started to do a little campaign revival, reboot, what have you.   I'm looking back at the Thranconia Campaign, of the notorious Low-Rollers fame.   I'm going to re-vamp the house rules a bit.  I've already made the hex-map seen above to replace the hand-drawn map. 

  I'm doing a lot of work on the Thranconia wiki, adding stuff for a new campaign: THRANCONIA WIKI  

My general idea is to not make this our regular Sunday game, but instead make it a side-game.   I might do some solo games, and some side games other than our usual time.   I'm going to try to use one of the West Marches concepts of not having a "game night" for this game, but rather playing when I can and anybody feels like it, probably mostly virtually.   Maybe I'll have "Old School Saturday" or something if it seems worth it.

Campaign management, I'm going to try to keep the game calendar and the real calendar in as close alignment as possible, at least to start, if things take off in some other direction, I'll change things.  

A few things I'm going to test out.    Thief Skills:  instead of the d100 traditional style,  I'm going to rip off the Gangbusters Game I reviewed below.   Roll a d6 for each thief skill, don't get a 1-2.  I'll increase the die roll to 1d8, don't get a 1-2, at a higher level etc.   I've also created a series of general adventurer skills that work on a similar system that people can take (not nearly as many as a thief gets).   I don't want to skills for everything--no riding, athletics, lore, profession, etc, just cool stuff you need on an adventure.

Lots of ability checks (1d20, Ability Score or less) for trying basically anything you can think of.

More late.

Gangbusters B/X edition Read-through Review

I've gotten a copy of this game  Gangbusters B/X edition.   It's an interesting caldron of porridge.  It is simply the B/X edition of basic D&D with a 1920's skin on top.    Some of the stuff is just fantastic, like the suggestions for campaigns, running gangs and businesses, court cases, and even the car chase stuff looks interesting (haven't quite digested all that).    It is fully able to be integrated with B/X D&D, because all the NPC/enemies etc, have regular D&D stats and the guns etc. are on the same scale.

It is really rules lite, so you don't get bogged down in minutia, really just "if you don't know, roll ability score or less on d20."    

The character classes are a weird bit however.    There are 4 classes:  Brutish, Educated, Connected and Street Smart.    Each is rated from level 1-6.  Their HP progression is weird:

Brutish: lvl-1:  1d8, lvl-2 2d8, lvl-3 3d8, lvl 4--4d8, lvl 5-4d8+1,  lvl 6--4d8+2

Educated:  lvl-1: 1d6, lvl-2 2d6, lvl-3 2d6+2,  lvl-4 3d6, lvl-5 3d6+2, lvl-6 4d6

Connected:  lvl-1 1d6, lvl-2 2d6, lvl-3 3d6, lvl-4 4d6, lvl-5 5d6, lvl-6  5d6+2

Street Smart: lvl-1 1d4, lvl-2 2d4, lvl-3 3d4, lvl-4 4d4,  lvl-5 4d4+2,  lvl-6 5d4+1 

Their xp tables are based on D&D with Brutish using the fighter chart (2000xp to lvl 2),  the Educated the thief chart (1200xp), the Connected the cleric (1500xp) and the Street Smart the magic user (2500xp).  

Their class abilities are very bare bones:

The Brutish class make 1 attack per level against I HD or less enemies, gets +1 to intimidate and can use improvised weapons without penalty.

The Connected Class has 1 sphere of influence it can get favors from.

The Educated Class gets two vocations to be good at, one bonus language, and an area of expertise  (like safe cracking or chemical analysis)

The Street Smart class gets 4-5 special abilities (similar to D&D thief skills).

The Street Smart abilities and Educated expertise are resolved by rolling 1d6, and getting 3+.

I don't know how players would react to these bare-bones PC's.   It might be super cool, but fights are going to be very simple and very fast, so it's not a game for combat joy.  One would hope that people would just "try stuff" rather than seeing if there's a rule or ability for it.

 The weirdest thing is PC armor class.   It's based entirely on the quality of your clothing.  If you wear poor clothes, you're AC 7,  ordinary clothes AC 5,  fancy clothes AC 3.   My daughters think that that is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I just can't wrap my head around it.   NPC's don't work that way at all, the book just assigns them an AC,  so a Prison Guard has AC 7, Hooligan has AC 6 and Moonshiner AC 4.  It's just completely arbitrary like early D&D monsters.  

I think this might be fun as a one-shot sometime, or a short 3-4 session campaign with a definite goal,  

Earthen Rampart Project--Final Thoughts

 I must admit, that for rough landforms, I am certainly open to using plaster of Paris again.  It is relatively simple and straight forward to use, and cheap enough not to care about mistakes.

I actually don't know whether I like the rocky effect or the smooth effect better for the ramparts.  They both have their charms.

I am going to need to make a bunch more ramparts to be useful on the table, at least enough to make a square fort or to reach across the table.

Earthen Rampart Project --Part 4 Primed Product

Version 1:  Rocky

I chiseled off the extended base, figuring that a separate, painted cardboard sheet would do just as well for representing the ditch, and would allow greater customization in play and reduce the risk of the extension just breaking on its own.   I had made 2 rocky ramparts, one of which broke into 2 halves.   I gave them a priming coat of Terra Cotta

Version 2:  Smooth

I also primed the one that came out of the foil-lined cavity:

Earthen Rampart Project, part 3---Smooth it out

 After making 2 sections with that rocky texture.   I decided to make one with a smoother texture.

STEP-1:  line the Cavity with Aluminum foil

STEP-2:  pour, wait, remove:

Earthen Ramparts Project--Part Two: plaster

 STEP-1:   Mixing Plaster of Paris

This is surprisingly simple and very forgiving.   Just 2-parts plaster and 1 part cold water, mix well.

STEP-2:  Pour Plaster into cavity.   1 pint of plaster with 1 cup of water was just perfect to fill the cavity.

STEP-3  Wait 45 minutes and remove:

Here's where All-purpose sand made a difference.   The sand adhered to the plaster and wouldn't wash off.   It made the model really, really rocky looking.   Which is kinda cool, but not what I had intended:

Plaster Cast Rampart Project--Part 1 Making a Mold

 I decided to use plaster of Paris to create some earthen ramparts, since making a model of a pile of dirt doesn't take immense artistic know-how.

STEP-1

In the gear book, a standard length of rampart is 75' (15").  15" is a bit long for storage and non-breakablity, so I decided to make half sections of 7.5".

First I made a cardboard model, from a paper-towel tube and a piece of packing cardboard.  The extended base was intended to represent the area where the front ditch could be represented/painted (I later decided to remove this).

STEP-2:  I filled a box with sand, to form the mold.   I bought All-Purpose Sand, which is really filled with rocky chunks.

STEP-3:  I smoothed out the sand, roughly scooped out the center and pressed the cardboard model into the sand.

STEP-4  Removed the model, leaving the cavity/mold