Carolingian Swordsmen

 It's been a while.   Finally, since I got the basement back in order in advance of last night's in-person game.  I got some painting done last night.   Here' are 4 Carolingian (Age of Charlemagne) swordsmen.  I didn't really like the sculpts when I got them, but now that they're painted, I'm much happier with them.

Alternative Saving Throws for Thranconia

BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO LOOK UP SAVING THROWS, AND THE CATEGORIES ARE STUPID

I MEAN, HONESTLY, WHY A DIFFERENT SAVE FOR SPELL AND WAND?

 

When a Saving Throw is called for:

1)      Roll 1d20 and get a 17+

2)      Add Level or Full Hit Die (i.e., monsters and non-classed npc’s with less than 1d8,  +0) to a maximum of +11

3)      Clerics:   +2 to all saves

4)      Fighters:  +2 vs. breath weapons, petrification, energy drain, weapon effects, paralysis

5)      Magic-Users:  +2 vs spells, wands/staffs/rods. magic items, magical traps

6)      Thieves:  +2 vs. poison, magical traps, mechanical traps, falling

7)      Lackeys:  +2 vs. poison and disease

8)      Undead and Demons:  +2 on all saves except vs. Clerical Magic

9)      Elementals and other extra-planar creatures:  +2 on all saves except vs. Magic-User Magic.

10)   All other saving throw bonuses in species or monster descriptions still apply .

My Dungeon Making Process

 

I’ve been making a lot of dungeons lately, because I really like to make old school dungeons, and the new tools make them easier to make and neato to run online.

Here’s the process I’ve been using;

Step 1:  I make a map of 1 level, usually 20-30 rooms, sometimes more.  I label stairs, corridors, and secret rooms, plus any special purpose rooms all in the key.  I have decided to stop putting marks for Secret Doors on the map, because they are visible, I just have rooms with no doors and explain the secret door in the room key.

Step 2:  after picking a dungeon level, I generate some random monsters using either the old D&D Monster/Treasure Assortments or the dungeon monster encounter tables I’ve made (expanding the ones in the Blueholme book considerably).  I like to have about 2/3 as many monsters as rooms.   Old Gary would have made it about 1/3, but while empty rooms are critical to have players not expect a monster in every single room.  However, 2/3 empty rooms gets to be snoresville.    If I had a definite theme in mind ahead of time, I'd likely pick the monsters from the lists instead.

Step 3:  I look at the monsters and try to deduce a theme, a story behind them being there.   For example, in the first level of Quellintan, I saw that there were quite a few Dwarves and Hobgoblins.  Most everything else were bugs and undead.   I came up with the Curse that kept these two groups in the dungeon.   I then adjusted the monster list, changing any orcs into hobgoblins and elves into dwarves, making the berserkers mercenaries of the dwarves.

Step 5:  I put the monsters on cards.  I found it’s better to have all the monster stats together rather than type them in as I go with the room keys. 

The Cards look like this:  (QU-3 stands for Quellintan, Upper, Card 3)

Encounter Card:    QU-3   7 Hobgoblins   AC 6, HD 1, Move 30, Thaco-19, LE DEX-11 , MOR- 17 Hand axe, SR-2, 1d6 damage   Hit Points:   3,   7,  7,  5   6,  2,  6

 

Step 6:  Then I place the monsters on the map.  Each room in the key I’ll now write a short description of its purpose and noteworthy features, then the Code (e.g. QU-3) for the monster card that’s in the room.  I try to keep factions (like dwarves or hobgoblins together) and try to come up with rationales for things being where they are.  If there’s monster that seems like a boss of a faction, I’ll make note of that and place him accordingly.

Step 7:  I then go through the key and scatter Chests, Sacks and Garbage in each room as befits its monster or position.   I tend to roll for treasure randomly, either using the old D&D monster/treasure assortments, or using my Random Dungeon Maker.  I must admit that regularizing “Dungeon Garbage” has been quite interesting.  I’ve always had the occasional pile of junk lying around, but it’s better when you know it’s going to be there and it’s sometimes good, but often bad.

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: